Sky scolds Openreach appointment record to force BT split
Sky has published a scathing review on BT’s ownership of broadband infrastructure maintenance group Openreach in its latest push to have the bodies separated.
A document, submitted to Ofcom’ as part of its ‘Strategic Review of Digital Communications’, calls for the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to conduct an inquiry into Openreach’s management.
It stated that BT has a “history of under-investment” in Openreach which has caused “a range of service quality problems including… network faults, failure to meet targets for repairing faults, long waits to have new lines installed, appointments that are missed and jobs that are not completed”.
The report found that 90 per cent of Openreach new line installations take over ten days with almost a tenth taking over 30 days.
Furthermore, it added that in the period of a month, Openreach changed Sky customer installation dates an average 36,000 times, also missing 500 appointments and failing to finish 4,000 jobs.
Mai Fyfield, Sky’s chief strategy officer, said: “We are drawing attention to the problems in broadband because they are important to the economy as a whole. They affect competition between providers and have a direct impact on consumers and small businesses, resulting in inconvenience, dissatisfaction and loss of productivity.
“We believe that Ofcom should move quickly to ask the Competition and Markets Authority to undertake a full competition inquiry. Given the rapid changes taking place in the sector, we believe this should happen as soon as possible.”
BT was dismissive of the report telling Engadget that Sky was "engaging in selective spin rather than constructive dialogue".