'Be' Broadband updates on 24 meg service

Broadband ISP "Be There" has issued an update on the progress it's made so far in providing unbundled broadband in London.

While it recognises that some punters have experienced difficulties, the ISP has sought to keep customers up to date with some of the issues facing the local loop unbundling (LLU) operator.

For instance, it reports that "getting our automated interfaces with BT to run smoothly" has caused a few problems, notably, that one in ten orders is not being completed within five weeks.

"Now obviously we need to do much better than that," said Be, which wants all orders delivered within four weeks, and three quarters within two weeks.

Elsewhere, it has reported some connection issues and confirmed that three exchanges have yet to be brought online.

Anyhow, here's that update in full. ®

A message for all our Be members,

Firstly, we truly appreciate your support for our company and being brave early adopters for our service. We recognize that there is frustration regarding your experiences to date and we wanted to assure you that we are doing everything in our power to quickly and efficiently resolve issues. Obviously, we did expect to hit some early "challenges" as we launched, (hence the purpose of the pilot), but were also expecting that the issues would be more internally focused and that you would not be as effected as much as you have been.

Below I have listed the high level issues that we have at this time and how we are working to resolve them for you. Additionally, you will find a list of all our live exchanges and our delayed exchanges at the bottom of the message.

If you have any further questions or need any help, please contact us directly through our member centre (www.BeThere.co.uk/member), or via telephone 0870 9506 101 or 020 7136 0641.

Our major issues:

1. Processing your orders One of our greater challenges has been getting our automated interfaces with BT to run smoothly. As the receiving system has recently been upgraded and our system is new - there was a great opportunity for issues - and as luck would have it, we have found them. (We even have had an issue as our name had changed from Avatar Broadband to Be Un limited!) We've tracked down the majority of issues and we (along with BT) are all working day and night to resolve them - we are making great progress. We expect to be caught up on resolving order errors by early next week.

   Based upon our current progress we see that:

   • 63% of orders on live exchanges will go live in 2-4 weeks of the exchange going live
   • 87% of orders on live exchanges will go live within 5 weeks of the exchange going live

   Now obviously we need to do much better than that. Our target is to have all orders delivered within 4 weeks, and 75% within 2 weeks. We will keep you posted as to our progress in meeting our targets.

2. Perceived line instability and connection issues Some of you have reported difficulty connecting and/or frequent re-training of the line. We have fixed over 50% of reported issues and are making strong progress towards the others. With respect to the frequent re-training - we have a fix that we will be testing tomorrow. In short, we choose a profile on our system to give a very high speed, but it seems that for many of you your line noise is greater than the tolerance of this profile. Therefore, we have created a new profile which may decrease speeds slightly but will require less retraining and thus add to your stability. Once the new profile is tested, we will roll it out to those that reported frequent modem re-training.

   If you are having a problem but have not reported it, please fill out a ticket in our member centre www.BeThere.co.uk/member as this will ensure that we assign you the new profile and resolve you issue.

3. Responding to your tickets

   Given all the above issues, we have receives lots of emails, tickets and calls. We have fallen behind our target for answering tickets (4 hours) and therefore set up a special task force at the beginning of this week to respond to all outstanding items. We are working hard to respond quickly but there may be some delay until we remove the backlog - but we will. If you have created a ticket in the member centre and feel that you are happy that we are working on the issue or that the issue has been resolved please close the ticket. This would help us refocus our staff to responding to outstanding items and reducing waiting times on new calls. If you have opened a ticket and it's not yet been resolved, then there is no need for you to send in a new one. We will answer all tickets. Promise.

Our entire team is working flat out to identify and resolve all of our teething issues as soon as we can. Our pilot price was set to reward you for dealing with the issues that we knew we'd have and to thank you for your support. For those of you that have been unduly inconvenienced we will be offering additional Thank Yous to help make up for missed expectations. We are as disappointed as you are that we have not been able to meet your expectations and our leadership team is committed to ensuring that Be exceeds your expectations in the future.

I would like to thank each of you personally for your patience and commitment to BE by sticking with us through this rough patch.

Kind regards

Brett Head of Member Services

P.S. Please do not RESET your modem, as this will remove the Be templates and prevent you from connecting to our service. However, if you have done so, you can call the member centre and we'll get new ones out to you immediately.

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Below is a list of our active exchanges!

Active Exchanges

BERMONDSEY, CLERKENWELL, EUSTON, HOLBORN, KINGS CROSS, SHOREDITCH, WALWORTH, ALBERT DOCK, BARKING, DAGENHAM, MUSWELL HILL, NORTH FINCHLEY, PALMERS GREEN, ROMFORD, STRATFORD, CATFORD, DEPTFORD, GREENWICH, PUTNEY, THAMESMEAD, TULSE HILL, WIMBLEDON, CHISWICK, EALING, HAMMERSMITH, PERIVALE, BAYSWATER, MAIDA VALE, PADDINGTON, PRIMROSE HILL, BATTERSEA, BRIXTON, CHELSEA, FULHAM, NINE ELMS, PARSONS GREEN, PIMLICO, SOUTH KENSINGTON, WEST KENSINGTON, WOOLWICH, FULHAM, STEPNEY GREEN, POPLAR

Delayed Exchanges, please note we can not give ETA's for an exchange

HACKNEY, SHEPHERDS BUSH, NEW CROSS

To date, we've committed to unbundling 700 additional exchanges over the next 9 months, and may even increase that number to 1000. Shortly, we will be posting the full list of committed exchanges on the website.