Six Degrees of BT

The first thing that you should understand about BT, is how BT is (in theory) split up.

• BT Retail - Responsible for your telephone voice service usually, plus BT Internet/Yahoo! Internet.
  
• BT Wholesale - Sells data services, including broadband to nearly all ISPs that use BT landlines; with the exception of LLU providers - they simply use BT Wholesale to place orders to move lines onto their own equipment. Theoretically, all broadband providers have equal access (here's the first secret, they don't).
• BT Openreach - The voice service equivalent of BT Wholesale. Not a lot to say here, except that these guys for some strange reason actually tend to be the most helpful out of all three BT companies. Unfortunately, they won't come into this blog much.
  

First thing you should know, is that although BT like to claim that all three companies are seperate, they're not really. A BT engineer may work on a wholesale job one day, and be working on an Openreach job the next.

Secondly, is that even though BT Retail and BT Wholesale systems (databases, ordering and reporting systems) are supposed to be separate, they're not really. All too often I have seen BT Retail have access to systems that they are not supposed to have. However, the illusion of separation is purely to keep Ofcom off their back.

Thirdly and lastly, is something we like to call the "blame circle" in my workplace, and the unreal seperation of the BT groups only helps them to do this. The blame circle is when one group will pass off a problem onto another group until it eventually comes full circle. For example, a ADSL fault is reported. Wholesale will state that it's a problem with the voice service, and the customer will need to contact their provider... which is 99 times out of 100, BT Retail. BT Retail phone monkeys are apparently taught that at even the slightest mention of "fault" and "broadband" to retort with "Sorry sir, but you'll have to call your ISP. This is a broadband fault." and so on.

Next time, we'll explain the BT eCo Broadband ordering system, how and why BT Retail are not made to use it, and why it is the greatest source of frustration for a lot of providers.