NoT - the quiet week

The new OFCOM Notice of Transfer system for broadband migrations has been going for over a week now.

This means that this week is quiet - migrations have been changed from 5 working days to 10 working days (by the regulator acting in interests of the customer, of course?!). As most migrates are on this minimum lead time, this means no migrates (in or out) completing this week.

We think it is going well from our point of view. It is a little hard to tell yet but I think we are gaining on average. This makes some sense as we were always easy to get a MAC from (and it was on-line and automated) but people dreaded calling other ISPs to get a MAC to move to us. So maybe that is good for us.

We have not yet seen a slamming on broadband - either from us, or an accusation of us slamming (e.g. one of our new customers mistyping details on our order form). I wonder when the first will be.

We have managed to make our internal systems much more orthogonal and allow nice PGP signed emails to customers for key events (the OFCOM required ones, and some not strictly required such as when migrates complete). The changes to our terms and billing system seem to have worked, with only minor transitional issues. The new early termination charges system is working as planned and saving customers money. Overall I am quite pleased with how it is going. Not that OFCOM pay us for all this work we have to do...

We have seen one person who is moving to us who has not received any notice from existing provider, and indeed, the existing provider (when questioned) says there is no migrate happening. That will be a fun one to watch.

We had a surprise - BT used to have a real issue with "pending orders" stopping any other order and importantly stopping any faults being reported. After decades of this being a pain, it seems the new NoT process has prompted BT to fix this - allowing a fault to be reported whilst a migrate is pending. The other surprise is BT stating that cancelling orders has no cost - solving the moral issue of who pays for a "Cancel Other" order as both ISPs have good reason for it not being them!

This also makes some scenarios simpler - people moving in to a new house. It was always best if they can migrate the existing service, but that meant getting the previous occupant to get a MAC and hand it over. Now, the new occupant can simply order service for the date they move in.

Update: Seems more than half of migrates that are outgoing end up in a state that cannot in fact have tests run or fault reports done for the 10 workings days that a migrate is pending. BT are working on fixing this!