Mandatory Openreach charges?

[dujas]

Thinkbroadband has an article about a draft change in the charging of BT Openreach's SFI engineer visits.

According to a draft Openreach document (PDF), this existing SFI visit looks set to be replaced by a service called SFI2 which will always carry a chargeable call out fee. The actual SFI2 product is expected to appear in February 2010.

In theory this SFI2 type visit should only be needed when the line is working according to the specification (defined in SIN 349) and Openreach's line test system says everything is OK. Alas this does not cover all types of faults, and particularly with intermittent faults which may not show up when Openreach does its testing. This means there is the possibility that a provider and hence the consumer may get charged for multiple visits, and as two types of booking are possible, i.e. one that looks at external network and one including a visit to the consumers home, the scope for people getting a big bill with little understanding of why are very evident.

[Rik]

BT screw us once again.

[Colin Burns]

they like to keep practicising the art... it wont be long before they try and run for goverment