BT 2014 Annual Report Download - page 48

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The Strategic Report
Delivering our strategy
Delivering our strategy
Passive Infrastructure Access (PIA)
PIA products allow CPs to rent space in Openreachs ducts or on
telephone poles. CPs can use this space for their own bre networks
instead of buying bre broadband services directly from us.
Wholesale ine Rental (WR)
WR is a copper-based service which lets CPs oer own-branded phone
services (with their own pricing and billing) using our equipment and
network. They pay to use the copper lines between our exchanges and
customer premises but can avoid investing in extra network equipment
or infrastructure.
ocal oop Unbundling (U)
U is also a copper-based service. It allows CPs to oer broadband
services by installing their own equipment in our exchanges and renting
the copper line to the customer premises. CPs can use our shared metallic
path facility (SMPF) product to oer broadband over a WR line or our
metallic path facility (MPF) product to oer both phone and broadband
services over a copper line using their own equipment.
Ethernet
Our Ethernet products oer business-grade, dedicated bre
connections. CPs use them in their own networks and to provide high
quality, high bandwidth services to businesses and the public sector.
<ou can read more about these services at
www.openreach.co.uk
Performance in the year
Our bre broadband network passes more than 19m premises and is
being used by 2.7m end-customers. Our physical line base grew by
83,000 in the year. But our service performance was aected by the
extreme weather conditions and widespread ooding across the UK.
Key facts:
Third consecutive year of
growth in total physical lines
Ethernet circuits up 14%
Fibre broadband coverage
more than 19m premises
1.3m new Ƭbre broadband
customers
Operating performance
During the year we largely nished building bre broadband
infrastructure in areas where the business case is viable without public
subsidies. We also started to roll out bre to wider communities,
supported by public funding from the Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK)
programme. This funding was awarded to us following competitive
tenders. We are now in the build phase for each of these contracts.
Total premises passed with Ƭbre
At 31 March
million
0
12
9
6
3
15
18
21
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
Take-up of bre broadband is growing strongly, with 1.3m new bre
connections during the year and over 2.7m homes and businesses now
connected.
There are 18.5m DS and bre broadband users on our network,
an increase of 0.8m in the year.
The UK was rst in eight out of twelve measures in Ofcoms 2013 EU
Broadband scorecard which assesses factors such as broadband
coverage, take-up and usage in the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain.
Despite the problems caused by the weather, we managed to grow our
physical line base by 83,000 in the year. This is the third consecutive
year of growth.
The number of Ethernet circuits we provide grew 14% in the year.
This reects more demand for connections for CPs business
customers as well as CPs requiring greater speeds and capacity within
their own networks.
Customer service delivery
People are increasingly reliant on their xed-lines for continuous access
to the internet. This means customer expectations have risen around
the time taken to install, upgrade or repair their line. Ofcom is proposing
to introduce minimum service levels around the repair and provision
oflines.
Although we have made progress improving some aspects of our service,
we have not always kept pace with customers shifting expectations.
The main area where we did improve was in providing new lines to homes
and businesses. The average time to provide a new line was around ten
days, in line with the commitments we had made to industry.
We installed 93% of lines on the day agreed with customers, and only
6% of lines developed a fault within 28 days.
But we need to increase the speed and consistency with which we
repair faults in our network. We repaired only 70% of faults within the
timeframe we had committed to customers. While repair performance
was hampered by the extreme weather between December and
February, we are committed to increasing investment in the resilience
of our network.
For our business customers, our Ethernet provision performance
was below our targets. In particular, we missed the agreed customer
delivery date for around one in six Ethernet orders. More positively, once
provided, our Ethernet services proved robust and less than 12% of
circuits required a repair during the year.
Our RFT was up on average for the rst three quarters but then declined
1.9% due to widespread storms and ooding across the UK, which led
to record fault volumes and meant it took longer than normal to provide
our services.