New pre-planning line check boosts ‘on time delivery’ rate for PPCs

A change in the tolerances used to check the suitability of copper lines for Partial Private Circuits (PPCs) is now helping to avoid possible delivery delays for customers.

A member of BT Wholesale's Service Provision team, Senior Service Manager Howard Ambrose explains: "The first step when taking a new PPC order used to be a desk-based line test working to a line loss tolerance of -27dB. If the line loss was less, planning would go ahead. But in a tiny percentage of cases when installation started for real - on the ground, so to speak - it would be found that the copper would be outside of technical delivery range. And that might mean a re-think for customers and the chance that we would miss the delivery date.

To solve the problem, tests started on a new pre-planning check for copper lines late last year. Following its success this is now in use nationally. Howard continues: "There's now a lower limit for line loss at -21dB. If a line is within that new tolerance, work can go ahead as planned for the PPC. But if the loss is more then -21dB then we can let the customer know much earlier in the order cycle that copper isn't feasible in this instance. That in turn gives CPs an earlier opportunity to review their plans and opt for a fibre alternative instead."

Having started with PPCs, the new pre-planning line check is going into action on new Retail Private Circuit orders as well. At present this is a manual process but plans are in place to automate it from later this month.

GET MORE >

Read about the connectivity opportunities of Partial Private Circuits here.

Read about another initiative to improve the delivery of new highband Partial Private Circuits in this issue here.

Or contact your BT Wholesale account management team.