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BT & Openreach Industrial Action
BT / Openreach workers have voted in favour of carrying out further strikes on 6th, 10th, 20th and 24th October.
During industrial action, Openreach will prioritise repairs over the activation of new orders, though there will likely be a backlog in both resulting in longer lead times.
We are working closely with our suppliers BT and Openreach who manage the infrastructure over which we deliver much of our services to mitigate and plan for any impacts. The inter dependencies mean that any delays will also impact Zen orders and repairs. This will be felt across all providers who use the Openreach network and is not unique to Zen.
Our teams are on hand to support our customers and partners to minimise any disruption as best we can. Please see our FAQs below. Should you have any additional questions or would like to speak to someone from the team for more information, our contact details can be found here.
FAQs
BT Strikes FAQ
Appointments are expected to go ahead as planned during strike dates.
Openreach are constantly reviewing their capacity and, if appointments need to be moved, standard procedures and business as usual processes will apply. Zen will handle this on your behalf, and will keep you informed should this be the case.
Appointments booked for strike days are expected to go ahead. There is no increased risk for premium/complex orders.
The expectation is that if the appointment has been confirmed, it will still go ahead.
If necessary, Openreach will implement a service staircase similar to prioritisation during Covid. In principle this covers the following:
- Blue light – repair and provision – emergency services
- Welfare and vulnerable repair
- CNI (Critical National Infrastructure) repair
- CNI (Critical National Infrastructure) provision
- Major service outages, major incidents, and emergency safety incidents (prioritised on volume and effect/impact)
- Repair for loss of service
- Repair other
- Provision for new lines
Openreach expect that orders will be completed as per standard delivery process. There is no increased risk that orders will be completed remotely.
Any Ethernet appointments scheduled for Monday 19th September will be reappointed by Openreach directly with the end customer.
Yes, we expect there will be an impact due to the industrial action on 6th, 10th, 20th and 24th October. There may also be fallout for a certain period after the strike days as the teams catch up on resultant backlog.
Openreach will support repair in the same way as handled on a Bank Holiday with priority given to vulnerable/at risk customers, emergency services (Blue light) and services classed as critical national infrastructure.
Yes, we are experiencing impacts to fault escalations as a result of the industrial action. In particular, for a few days after industrial action there is a resultant backlog that can cause delays.
