Oral evidence: Telecommunications in Rural Scotland, HC 1094Wednesday 18 March 2015

Oral evidence, 18 March 2015.

Witnesses

Brendan Dick, Director, BT Scotland, Paul Morris, Head of Government Affairs, and Colin Scott, Senior Regulatory Manager for Scotland, Vodafone UK, gave evidence.

Chair

Good afternoon. I want to thank British Telecom and Vodafone for coming along this afternoon to help us with our inquiry into telecommunications in rural Scotland. Perhaps you would start off by introducing yourselves.

Brendan Dick

I am Brendan Dick, the director for BT Scotland.

Paul Morris

I am Paul Morris, head of Government affairs for Vodafone.

Colin Scott

I am Colin Scott, senior regulatory manager, based in Glasgow.

Chair

I want to start off on the topic of landlines. When we asked for evidence we had many cases of individuals being left without a working phone line for over a month. In fact, in one case it was two months. That meant that people were unable to access help in an emergency, particularly if they lived in a rural area, run a business or be on call for their employers. Brendan, can you explain what went wrong this winter and why people were left without a phone line for so long?

Brendan Dick

Certainly we experienced weather over this winter which, as you know, affected from Argyll up the west coast into the highlands and Orkney and Shetland. We had a particular predominance of lightning strikes. I will come back to what that means technically in a second. The volume was the worst we have seen in terms of lightning, bad weather and high winds for 47 years, according to one of our Openreach managers. He has been in the company that long. The impact of lightning, unlike for example in power networks which tend to be more core network solutions, is that it impacted on individual lines extensively. In some cases lines were hit three or four times, were repaired and then hit again. It was quite dramatic. That was the worst we had. Clearly it does not excuse the fact that people did suffer and I acknowledge that. We deployed about 340 extra field engineers. They were brought into Scotland and were obviously focused on the west coast and up through the islands. Of those, about 250 were brought in from down south in England. The backlog has been eaten into, but clearly people were left without service for some time. As I say, in summary, it is the most extreme, for that kind of impact, we have seen in a generation or more. We are working through it, but it was particularly challenging.

Chair

Why are you not prepared for weather instances like that? Bad weather happens in Britain, so why were you not prepared?

Brendan Dick

We are prepared for bad weather. This was particularly extreme. We liaise extensively with the Met Office at UK and local level, and also very extensively with the civil resilience team in the Scottish Government. One of the challenges that we had this year was the unpredictability of where it would strike. As I say, it was from Shetland right down the west coast, the Western Isles and down to Argyll and Bute. It was the volume rather than whether it would happen; and there was more lightning. Obviously we do get storms in Scotland and in the UK, and we are as prepared for that as we can be.

Chair

You have an obligation called the universal service obligation to provide a working landline connection to everybody in the country. Are any penalties imposed on you for leaving people two months without a phone?

Brendan Dick

Under normal circumstances people can claim compensation. When things are outwith our reasonable control, there is a thing called matters beyond our reasonable control—MBORC—which I am sure you know of and which we do not invoke lightly; the mechanism for agreeing it has to be that the thing that has cropped up is beyond the norm, beyond our reasonable control, and indeed that the quick solution would be impractical to achieve in a reasonable time scale. That is a model agreed with industry. It is familiar to Ofcom. In fact some recent work over the last few months, during this last series of really bad weather, resulted in dialogue with the communication providers, who are ultimately Openreach’s customers, and new procedures being used for that.

Chair

You said that MBORC had been agreed. Agreed with whom?

Brendan Dick

With industry. That is how it works. Ofcom is familiar with the process and how it works. The results are reported to Ofcom monthly and they have the ability to scrutinise them.

Chair

You say that it is reported to Ofcom. Do Ofcom have any role in deciding whether or not your declaration of MBORC was reasonable?

Brendan Dick

They have the power to look into that. I do not think they have questioned it on this occasion—to my knowledge. I would have to check the detail of that offline.

Chair

How many times have you declared MBORC since you became a private company?

Brendan Dick

I do not know; I would have to check that offline. When it became a private company, I was a kid—in 1984. Openreach clearly did not come into existence, without avoiding the flippant comment, until 2006. I am happy to take it offline and check, if that would be helpful.

Chair

You are the director for Scotland—even if you don’t have the exact figure—have you been the director for Scotland since 2006?

Brendan Dick

Yes, I have.

Chair

You have obviously worked at this very senior level within the company. Off the top of your head, can you tell us how many instances you can recall where MBORC has been declared?

Brendan Dick

No. You could argue that I should know, but I do not know. I would have to check.

Chair

Are you aware of any other instances?

Brendan Dick

Yes. MBORCs happen. In the last winter they occurred largely on the west coast—in fact, not in December but in January. They occurred down in the south-west and Dumfries as well. There was a small one in central Scotland. At other times on different occasions they have occurred in other parts of the country, so they do happen.

Chair

Over how big an area during last winter was MBORC declared?

Brendan Dick

They can be declared, and were on this particular occasion, in different geographies at different times, but there were overlaps; for example, I think I said that the south-west, Dumfries and Galloway was from January and towards the end of the month. There was a slightly shorter one in central Scotland, but the longest serving one was clearly on the west coast and up through the islands. That kicked in in December and lasted through to the end of January or early February. That was where the most significant impact was. Basically it depends on where the weather impact is. It is not done by local authority or anything, but broadly speaking that would give you a geography.

Chair

Do you draw a line around an area on a map and declare MBORC in that particular area?

Brendan Dick

Yes. It will be based on where the exchanges are and where the service impact is. As most of you know, we have a significant number of exchanges in Scotland. There are about 1,070, which is a fifth of the UK total. They are well spread out and many of them of course, in the north and west, are quite small. Broadly speaking, we would report those by geographies that people would understand, like highlands and islands, Argyll and central Scotland.

Chair

Regarding your performance targets, what is the impact of declaring MBORC?

Brendan Dick

Looking towards how we perform at the end of the year?

Chair

I will phrase the question differently. If you had not declared MBORC, what does your universal service obligation say about how long it should take you to repair a fault after it is reported by the consumer?

Brendan Dick

The USO is more about providing the connection; it is not about the service. The service levels will be agreed between Openreach and the communication providers. If a customer happened to be a retail customer of BT Retail, they would have a certain service level agreement with them as the retailer. They could have different ones with other retailers. I clearly do not know what they might be. I think behind your question is the fact that, when MBORC is declared, those service level agreements between Openreach and the service provider are put into neutral, just because of the extenuating circumstances.

Chair

When somebody signs up with a retailer, which could be BT Retail or any other company, does their agreement with that retailer normally give them a length of time that it would take to repair a fault?

Brendan Dick

Yes. It depends on the service they buy, but typically at a residential level it would be a few days. Many businesses, and in fact consumers, are perfectly entitled to have the same connection, and the same speed if it is for broadband, but procure a better service guarantee to get things fixed. Obviously there is a cost associated with that. In terms of the situation we are talking about, as you know, the relationship in terms of the service is between Openreach and the communication provider. In the case of BT Retail, as an example, the customer is perfectly entitled to seek some sort of compensation from Retail. That compensation would have to take place with Openreach as the provider of the network, as it would through any other organisation.

Chair

The retailer then has an agreement with Openreach; is that correct?

Brendan Dick

Yes, all of them would. Then they discuss that from their own perspective, as the case may be. As you know, across the UK there are several hundred communication providers. Not all of them operate in every geography, but a significant number do. It would depend how that worked.

Chair

If you declare MBORC, does it mean that all these rules about the length of time to repair faults and entitlement to compensation disappear?

Brendan Dick

Effectively, it is put into neutral. Clearly two things can happen. As I said at the beginning, the agreement is something that is agreed and understood—

Chair

Could I interrupt you? You said “agreed”. Is it agreed between yourself and 50 or 60 different retailers?

Brendan Dick

Yes. The MBORC scenario is discussed regularly, agreed and reviewed with communication providers.

Chair

Does every retailer in the country agree with you that MBORC was declared in this instance?

Brendan Dick

The model is agreed with the communication provider network. We would then declare it.

Chair

When you declare it in a particular instance it is simply you declaring it.

Brendan Dick

Yes, against an agreed model, effectively.

Chair

What is that agreed model?

Brendan Dick

I do not know the specific detail of how that works with each CP. It is agreed through consensus. I can find out more.

Chair

Is that something you could write about to the Committee afterwards?

Brendan Dick

I am sure we can; absolutely. That is how it works, but, as I said at the beginning, the model has worked since Openreach’s creation. It flexes and changes over time. There is a mechanism in process, and a dialogue that takes place to review and refresh it, and, as I said, there have been some recent dialogues about that. Critically, communication with the communication provider market is crucial in this, as is the relationship with the regulator.

Chair

What is concerning me—it certainly concerns your customers—is that there does not seem to be any incentive for you to carry out these repairs quickly. It seems that you can just decide, “We have had bad weather; let’s declare MBORC,” and then all the standards go out of the window.

Brendan Dick

I do not think they do. If that were the case we would not have deployed 350 extra engineers to fix it, but we did because we take our responsibilities very seriously. Obviously this winter was the most serious I have known in my working life. We are trying to look at that and review it to see how we can learn from it. The lightning was particularly challenging.

Chair

As well as not imposing the length of time you have to repair a fault, am I right that it also allows you to break appointments at will?

Brendan Dick

Appointments are not broken on purpose. The challenge of working with that volume of activity was really difficult. Appointments are made through a system, as you can appreciate. There are dozens of communication providers operating, for example, in your constituency. They flow through a system. Engineers are out there. There was a significant impact on the west coast, of course. It depended on travel practicalities and health and safety. Appointments were certainly not broken at will. Clearly when the bad weather struck there was an increased level of missed appointments. That happened and no one likes to do that, but they are not broken just because we want to break them.

Chair

My understanding is that once you have declared MBORC there is no rule that you have to keep an appointment.

Brendan Dick

Even without MBORC, the same situation pertains; we have an appointment book that people work to, and they try to make that happen. Occasionally it does not work even on a normal sunny day.

Chair

Yes, but in this case I was getting a lot of complaints from people that appointments were being regularly broken. Clearly there can be circumstances such as a ferry being off or bad weather, but no reasons were given for appointments being broken; engineers just were not turning up.

Brendan Dick

The mechanism is obviously from Openreach with the CPs—the communication providers—speaking to the customer to help explain that. That should happen. The CPs will be in regular liaison with Openreach job control.

Chair

If your engineer realises that he or she is not going to make an appointment, does the engineer contact headquarters to say, “I’m going to miss this appointment”?

Brendan Dick

The system would be part of that process. It would be logged on the system that he is not going to make it. Depending on timings, he might realise half an hour or an hour before that it is not going to happen. It is then a question of how that communication to the customer happens.

Chair

Is that automatically communicated to the retailer?

Brendan Dick

It gets communicated to the retailer but it can be too late to communicate that to the customer.

Chair

So there is no automatic—

Brendan Dick

Once the engineer has logged on the system that he is not going to make it, it would be; but that timing might struggle.

Chair

It is then up to the retailer to tell the customer, is it?

Brendan Dick

The normal dialogue is between the communication provider and the customer, yes.

Chair

That sounds very cumbersome. We will come to mobile phones later on, but often the consumer still has a mobile phone that is working. There are plenty of cases where, although they have given that mobile phone number to their retailer, they never get a call on their mobile phone to say that the appointment has been broken. Why can’t the engineer simply phone them?

Brendan Dick

If they have contact and they know what it is, that is possible. I obviously do not know in every case whether they do or do not.

Chair

Can you give any explanation for the large number of broken appointments?

Brendan Dick

I think it is just the volume. It is not ideal.

Chair

You said this was a lightning strike. I presume therefore—

Brendan Dick

Lots of lightning strikes, over a month and a half.

Chair

It was not just a lot of lightning strikes on the one day; it was a series of lightning strikes over a sustained period.

Brendan Dick

Yes. I can quote an example in Orkney. I do not know the name of the customer or the address, but I know that this happened throughout the whole of the west coast quite a lot. The ops manager in Orkney had one customer who didn’t just need their line repaired; when lightning strikes it burns kit, so extensive engineering work was needed five times. It would be fixed and then they would have to go back, and so on and so forth. To be fair, that was probably quite extreme, but over that period throughout the winter, and over Christmas and into January, it was not uncommon to have some customers being affected several times. At the beginning I alluded to one of the particular challenges of lightning strikes, and it is true across all industries; they are very localised to lines. It is not a question of an exchange going down. That occasionally happens with a service, but they are usually back on either instantly with back-up generators or, even if that fails, within hours we have other routes so then the whole community is back online. These are all very individual faults, which occasionally happened multiple times.

Chair

Do you have records of the number of appointments broken and the number of people where you failed to repair the fault within a month?

Brendan Dick

That information will probably exist. I do not have it with me.

Chair

Could you write to us with the information?

Brendan Dick

I can give you an indication of what happened; yes, we can do that.

Chair

It concerns me that there just does not seem to be any incentive for you to carry out repairs within a quicker period of time. Openreach is a monopoly so people cannot say, “I am fed up with them and I am going to somebody else.” If you declare MBORC, there are no fines. There just does not seem to be any incentive whatsoever.

Brendan Dick

I think there is, because we will get beaten up, and rightly so, by our customers who are the communication providers.

Chair

But if you are a monopoly that does not actually help matters.

Brendan Dick

We are not a monopoly in the UK. There are other providers, albeit not in your area, I accept.

Chair

For the vast majority of people in Britain, Openreach is—

Brendan Dick

No; 50% of lines in Scotland have Virgin. Not in Argyll; I accept that, but it is not true that BT is a monopoly.

Chair

They are in rural Scotland though.

Brendan Dick

That is largely true, but it is a regulated monopoly. This goes back to what I said at the beginning. Not only do we agree the MBORC arrangements with the industry, but they can be scrutinised by the regulator as necessary; reports go in. It seems to be a model that works fairly effectively, and has done since it was introduced some years ago.

Chair

People without a phone for two months will not see it as working.

Brendan Dick

If I was without a phone for two months I would probably be climbing the walls, but none the less it is not true that we did not pull out every stop we could to try to redress the situation. As I say, if it had been wind-related in our network rather than lightning, it would have been a completely different scenario. The lightning this year was unique.

Chair

What was the factor or the bottleneck that was stopping repairs happening more quickly?

Brendan Dick

Volume, clearly, and repeat faults. Related to that, although it was not a major factor, but none the less a factor, was the weather, which affected travel and the ability to get engineers around, particularly on the islands. That would have some bearing on it.

Chair

If you had had more engineers, would that have allowed the repairs to have happened more quickly?

Brendan Dick

In an ideal world you could. As I say, we deployed 340 more, both from Scotland and with 250 coming from down south in England and Wales. We try to anticipate as best we can. In that period of time it was very difficult to predict where the impact would happen. It was much more extensive than one might have imagined. On a typical work profile, as a business, we have to try to run our engineering work force at an optimal level.

Chair

That is what worries me. It goes back to you having this monopoly. By optimal level, I presume that means you want to maximise your profits.

Brendan Dick

To say that we are a monopoly suggests that we can do what we like. It is a regulated monopoly. The price is set—

Chair

There does not seem to be any regulation. You can declare MBORC without—

Brendan Dick

But the regulation on things like prices matters. We are regulated on price as to what we can charge our communication provider customers for a whole range of services.

Chair

But that would appear to put an impetus on you to cut costs rather than to carry out repairs—for example, not to pay overtime.

Brendan Dick

We do. The guys or girls that were called in—they were mostly men, but that is by the bye—had a lot of overtime. There were clearly a lot of engineers staying up from down south. That has a cost both in terms of not doing work elsewhere but also for accommodation and so on. We did plough resource in.

Chair

But not enough. Could you have put more in?

Brendan Dick

From where? We put in 340.

Chair

Was that every spare engineer you had?

Brendan Dick

Yes; we ploughed in as many as we could. We are recruiting a lot of engineers. We just announced the other day that we are recruiting another thousand—for a variety of tasks.

Chair

If you had had the extra thousand engineers, would that have meant—

Brendan Dick

It depends what they do. They are going to be doing a whole range of things. I do not think it is fair to say that we are not investing in engineering. We invest a lot of money in engineering. For the last few years we have been recruiting.

Chair

But clearly you had not invested enough, if people were waiting two months without a phone.

Brendan Dick

But it was a unique situation. The lightning strikes—

Chair

Is this a once-in-50-years event?

Brendan Dick

Who can tell? I do not know; I am not a weather man.

Pamela Nash

I want to ask about your recruitment of engineers and staff. Are you recruiting easily for all the vacancies that you advertise?

Brendan Dick

It depends where you are. Do you want me to talk about Scotland rather than the UK? I can do either if you want.

Chair

We are the Scottish Affairs Committee, so it would be proper to concentrate on Scotland.

Brendan Dick

In Scotland there are good jobs, particularly for youngsters coming as apprentices. It is a valued skill to learn. Recruitment is generally going well. It has been challenging in places like Aberdeen because obviously, until fairly recently, the oil, gas and renewable sector dominated, and we found it very hard to recruit; but that has eased recently. Typically—I will come back to the UK general figure—I think I am right in saying that, last year or the year before when we opened up our application process, we had 24,000 applications. I may have to double-check that. Clearly we were not recruiting 24,000, so, generally speaking, engineering in BT, whether it be in Openreach or elsewhere, is seen as a pretty good job to have, with a good training.

Chair

If there are all these engineers queuing up to work for you, why don’t you employ enough so that you can repair these faults within a reasonable length of time?

Brendan Dick

Because it is a once-in-a-generation challenge.

Chair

So you are saying it is a once-in-30-year event?

Brendan Dick

As I said, the operations manager in Orkney has worked for BT for 47 years. I do not know if he was in the cradle; he must have joined at 15. He has never seen anything like it in Orkney. It looks like that. Clearly it has been a significant challenge. I am not for one minute downplaying it. We have been taking it very seriously, and clearly we are looking towards next year and one always tries to learn, as one should. We have to try to provide optimal resourcing. Obviously there is a norm in the summer and a norm in the winter. By winter standards this was exceptional, massively so.

Chair

Can you explain what you mean by optimal?

Brendan Dick

As in any organisation, you try to resource up to deliver the service you are required to provide with the right level of resource and in an affordable way. That is how I would describe it.

Chair

That sounds to me as if you are putting as your top priority containing your costs rather than delivering a service to customers.

Brendan Dick

No. If we were containing our costs, we would not have deployed another 340 engineers. We do not have them sitting there waiting in case there is a once-in-a-generation lightning strike. Correct. Right. I accept all that.

Chair

If you employed more engineers, are you suggesting that they would spend years sitting doing nothing? Is that what you are saying?

Brendan Dick

If you resourced on the west coast of Scotland, which is the area we were primarily talking about just now, to accommodate the kind of requirement for repairs we have just seen, yes, they would be sitting on their hands doing nothing.

Chair

But you can move people about the whole UK. Are you really saying that if you employed more people throughout the UK they would spend 30 years twiddling their thumbs?

Brendan Dick

No; we are employing more people in the UK, partly because the demand for services is also growing. So far we have been talking largely about repair, but in the whole communication sector—I am sure it will be true of mobile as well—demand is increasing, if not exponentially, at a consumer level for a whole variety of reasons. It is certainly going up at a business level for higher bandwidth services, so in part that is driving recruitment. I know you are not suggesting this, Chair, but I do not think it is practical to resource staff on the basis of the most extreme weather situations we have had for a generation. We move people around; as I said—

Chair

Are you saying that this is something that is going to happen once in a generation and people just have to put up with it?

Brendan Dick

I do not know that, but I do not think it is realistic or fair for us to resource up in the event that a once-in-a-generation thing might happen next year. Clearly we will be looking at this come next—

Chair

I hope we are not sitting here next year.

Brendan Dick

I know you will be looking at it as well; we will be.

Chair

We hope to be sitting here. I hope you are not sitting here.

Brendan Dick

Clearly our eyes are on it.

Chair

Has the problem now been resolved? Have you cleared the backlog?

Brendan Dick

We are well through it. I know this is no comfort to customers who have suffered extreme outages. We anticipate that by the end of this month, which is a couple of weeks away, we will be back where we should be.

Chair

You are going to tell me that this is once in a generation, but what lessons have you learned from this year that you will put into practice to minimise the impact should it happen again very quickly?

Brendan Dick

I will give you an example. I do not want to get too complex because it is partly due to the way the industry works generally. Obviously Openreach takes orders from its communication provider customer base, who interface out to customers in the community, businesses or residential. In a repair situation, the orders flow through from the end user, the customer, into the communication provider and to BT. The jobs basically get allocated and dealt with on an automatic basis. Clearly that works pretty well in a mainland and even rural mainland situation. It is more challenging on islands. One of the things we work on quite hard in the island communities is how we can get tighter working with job controls to try to be as bang up to speed as we can on geographic problems. On an island off Orkney, for example, we try to be bang up to date, from a variety of communication provider sources, with what is happening. Secondly, we prioritise things. For example, a number of elderly individuals in the community not only have telephony but alarm systems. Communication providers do not always know about those alarm systems, because unless you register them it won’t happen. A line might go down and they might be treated as just another line, but clearly it is quite critical for that individual and their broader family because the alarm systems depend on the line; so one of the things we are trying to do with customers and CPs is to make sure we know more about those. That then allows our engineering work force, as they would do appropriately, to try to prioritise things like that better. There is still a lot of work to be done on that. Obviously there are several communication points in the chain, but these sorts of things are important. It is certainly something I have discussed with local authorities in Scotland, who quite often supply some of these services. It is helpful to have a better way of knowing about them right through the system.

Chair

We obviously hope it does not, but say the same lightning storms happened either in the same part of the country or in a different part of the country next year. Would your response be any better?

Brendan Dick

In the examples I have provided I think, from some of the learning this year, that we would be able to swing in faster. It would be more effective. Certainly from my point of view—to take, for example, the vulnerable who have things like those alarms—one of the things I would want to do, talking with social services, is to make sure we know faster where they are. Those are a couple of examples.

Chair

These storms happened in remote parts of the country. If it had happened in London, what would have been the response? You would have far more consumers affected.

Brendan Dick

The processes would have been the same.

Chair

It would have taken two months to repair people’s phones.

Brendan Dick

Depending on how many there were.

Chair

Or could it have taken longer because there were more people involved?

Brendan Dick

But there are not ferries and things to get to customer problems in London. The processes would be identical. Clearly in a tight geography—it could be London, Glasgow or Edinburgh—it is easier to get engineers to places. Those are just the practicalities of it all, but the mechanism is the same. This is partly going back to how we do the local knowledge base. It is sometimes harder in rural parts. You have islands and so on, and things going on, but the system is the same.

Chair

If there are no other questions to Brendan on this part of the inquiry, we will move on to mobile phones.

Graeme Morrice

I want to raise some specifics about the rural parts of Scotland. One relates to Islay, which is the Chair’s area, and Aboyne in west Aberdeenshire. We had a situation where there was an outage in mobile phone signals for periods lasting as long as 10 days. Vodafone would certainly cover Aboyne but I am not sure about Islay. Why did we have a situation like that and why did the outage last for as long as 10 days? That seems to be quite excessive.

Paul Morris

We were in contact with the Chair. The first thing to say, as we have said to the Chair and his constituents and our customers, is that when we get an outage we apologise for that. We obviously want to run a service all the time. There are challenges to that. Clearly through this whole process we continually look at what we can do better. We can give you a couple of examples of things that we probably could do better, but equally it is quite a complex model. It includes working with Openreach to provide a connection to many of our masts. Clearly these things are exposed to the weather. The outage you are talking about was affected by the bad weather. We had 200 sites that went down all at once, including in the areas you mentioned. The main problem for us was power outage, although high winds were also a problem. Our engineers tell us that it is all right up to about 100 mph and then we get problems. The way that we connect these masts is by using microwave links, so we basically use radio waves in between the masts. There is not a fixed line that we can connect the masts to all the way to the islands, so we have to use innovation to connect the masts. The storms really affected that. The power went down and the wind blew some of the equipment around. Then it was about getting it back up and running, and it clearly took time to do that. That was basically the story. It was a case of getting around and changing the masts. We have a slightly complex model where there are a number of players that we need to get involved in the mix. The radio equipment might be run by a third party so we need to get them on site. We may need to get BT on site. We have a particular issue which will be of interest to policymakers. We have quite a lot of legislation which is out of date. A lot of it was introduced when BT was privatised. One of these things is property law. We cannot always get access to sites very quickly. We have a relationship with the landlord. Our average access to a site, would you believe in 2015, is 48 hours? It can be as long as 10 days. There are some issues where we need some help on the policy front. Ultimately after that outage, to be perfectly honest, we did, and are still doing, a big reflection on ourselves to see what we can do better. Colin has had a look at that. Some of the personal stories of the engineers are quite interesting.

Colin Scott

With those 200 sites down, there was obviously a huge engineering challenge. Some of our engineers were faced with real difficulties. One of the big difficulties was actually getting to the cell sites. They are often on top of hills and way off the roads. They are not even accessible by 4x4s. They have to walk miles with their equipment and kit. Then, when they get there, they might find that they are unable to climb the mast because it is covered in ice. There is a whole bunch of stories. We had issues in Mull where the engineers did not change their clothes for three days while they were trying to fix one site. It was a core site that was central to other cell sites in the area. There has been a huge amount of hard work going on in the business, for my colleagues in Glasgow and elsewhere in Scotland, to try to get the network up and running. We do not want to disappoint our customers; it is not in our interests.

Pamela Nash

Are there any advances in technology on the horizon or any research being done to ensure that the equipment is more robust, does not become covered in ice and is excluded from engineers?

Colin Scott

As part of our 4G roll-out we are replacing loads of kit. We are not just putting 4G kit in; we are replacing existing 2G and 3G kit. That kit is more robust than the stuff there now. With things like the microwave links, the new boxes we are putting in have heaters so that the ice does not build up, and it does not obscure the signal. Obviously when wind moves a microwave link there is not much we can do. Certainly we are now putting in more robust kit.

Graeme Morrice

I want to move from mobile phones to touch on superfast broadband. I know we will go into further detail on it later, but I have to leave soon to go to another pre-arranged meeting. Brendan will be aware of the numerous correspondence that has passed between us over the last number of months and years with regard to the roll-out of superfast broadband in my own constituency. You will be familiar with some of the towns and communities such as Murieston, Kirknewton, Mid Calder and Winchburgh in my constituency. Obviously there is a rurality aspect to my constituency, as I am sure there are in others. In particular, you may recall the Winchburgh situation and the proposed massive housing development in that area. That village is going to grow to four times its current size due to new housing and other facilities and infrastructure. A number of people who have moved into the new housing that has already been built do not have superfast broadband. When I have raised that specific issue, the kind of response I have had—not just from BT and other providers but also from the Scottish Government—is that as a default position that infrastructure is not going into new housing developments. They have to wait their turn, along with everyone else. I find that quite surprising. It seems a short-term fix, as opposed to looking at the overall long-term solution. I imagine that in the long term it would be a more cost-effective solution to put in the infrastructure when you are putting in the roads, footpaths and everything else. I am just wondering why that is and why we can’t do a bit better on that.

Brendan Dick

I agree with you. The way it works is this. There is a lot around exactly where you are; I know it well. If there is new housing going in from developers, sometimes, when it is done well, the developers will approach BT proactively—because we do not necessarily know everything—and say, “Look, we are doing this new site.” There might be multi-developers, which can sometimes cause a problem because there are a lot of smaller numbers. “We are doing this new location. Can we talk to you about how we provision?” If you think back to the Chair’s point about USO, we have to make provision for basic telephony and copper. If you are starting with a brownfield or a greenfield site, it is frankly pretty effective to put in the best technology you can, because you are doing it without having to dig up the pavements and roads afterwards. The way it works, Graeme, is that the developer would approach us, we talk about what is required and we effectively put the modern infrastructure in at the time the estate is being developed. That would then clearly mean that the customers can take up service at a certain point. They do not have to come to us. They do not have to come to BT to do it. They could go to other providers. Where it does not work is if the developer does not want to engage, with BT in this particular case, with Openreach, or does not think about it, and you can get the situation that you refer to. One of the things I have been doing—to be fair it has worked in some parts of the country—with the economic development and planning departments of local authorities is encourage them to not push things BT’s way necessarily, because that would be inappropriate, but at least make developers aware that there is an optimal way to do this and encourage them to engage, so that not only do they think about water and human basic needs but they think about provision for telephony and high-speed broadband. I think it is getting better, but there have clearly been some gaps in the last couple of years. Looking at where some of the gaps are is part of the process of the high-speed broadband contracts that are deployed—this is not unique to Scotland—in counties in England and Scotland. Working with the Scottish and British Governments and going to phase two, which they are beginning to look at now, we would certainly want to know those locations as part of that process, so that as Government put funding into phase two, we would try to lock those up. Housing estates typically have a lot of families with children, and demand will arguably be higher than in many other places. That is what happens. It is imperfect. Local authorities have a key role to play as a catalyst for those conversations. It is just a question of getting better at it. If you want to talk offline about specific ones and talk about developers, I will happily do that.

Graeme Morrice

That is interesting. I understand the role that a local authority will have in this regard. Maybe I need to speak to my own local authority about that in particular. You are saying that where you are approached by developers you will do it.

Brendan Dick

Yes. We have relationships at a Scottish or UK level with a whole lot of developers. Colleagues of mine who work with them have regular dialogue. Typically, we have stronger and regular dialogue with the bigger ones than with the smaller ones, but it does happen. We have basically an account relationship with a number of the national ones. I do not know the specific developers in the area you are talking about, but we could explore that quite easily.

Graeme Morrice

I have written to you about it. We can carry on that conversation at a later date.

Chair

I want to go back to Vodafone. What is your opinion of your performance in Islay over the past year?

Paul Morris

Over the year it has not been ideal. I checked yesterday how much our network was up, and also today, and it is in the very high 90s, about 99%.

Chair

Ninety-nine per cent.

Paul Morris

Yes.

Chair

On Islay.

Paul Morris

Not on Islay. As you know, as would be the case, we have an issue today on Islay.

Chair

You have an issue on Islay every day.

Paul Morris

We have had some issues on Islay; that is absolutely right. As Colin says, the network in Scotland is in transition. We are transitioning the network from basically a voice network, which we call 2G, to a voice and mobile internet network. That includes quite a lot of investment across the whole of the UK. It will improve the reliability of coverage generally. The voice coverage in Scotland is not that bad for us. When it does not work it is bad, but when it is working it is not that bad. The major improvements for us will be over the mobile internet. That will mean new equipment across the board, as Colin said. It will mean more stability and it will also be mobile internet. What is happening, of course, is that when the service does not work at all people notice; but, equally, people are getting the new technologies and they really notice when it is not working. We are in transition. As an industry, we are in transition in terms of the investment cycle, and I would ask you to judge us at the end of that investment cycle. There will still be areas where we need to work together, and there will still be areas where we need innovation like the rural open sure signal. We are doing some of that in the Chair’s constituency and other constituencies in Scotland—over 40 in Scotland—and that will vastly improve it, but equally we will still need to do some work together to—

Chair

Effectively, you are promising jam tomorrow but not today.

Colin Scott

As we speak, those engineers are trying to fix—

Chair

There are engineers on Islay most of the time. You said 99% operation. Was that in Scotland or in the UK?

Paul Morris

That figure is for the north and Scotland. It is an equivalent figure for the rest of the UK.

Chair

The north of England and Scotland. Do you have a figure for Islay?

Paul Morris

As you know, today the two sites are not working on Islay. At the moment the figure will be very low on Islay.

Chair

Zero.

Paul Morris

Yes. We apologise for that, but we have an engineer trying to fix it.

Chair

Do you have a figure averaged out over the past year for Islay?

Paul Morris

I do not have averages over the year. I asked for that but we do not have that over the year; sorry.

Chair

When a fault happens on Islay, why does it take so long to get it repaired?

Colin Scott

The Islay story is a complicated one. Rather unfortunately there was water ingress to the kit, so the kit has been replaced several times. It just seems to be a run of bad luck. We are not discriminating against Islay.

Chair

Wait a minute, it is not bad luck. It sounds as if it is just not being properly maintained.

Colin Scott

We replaced the kit, and there was water ingress which damaged the new kit. The kit has had to be replaced again.

Chair

There is a lot of rain on Islay. Surely you can design equipment so that it is waterproof.

Colin Scott

It is not clear whether it was a fault at our end or a fault with the kit manufacturer; I do not know, but the kit has been replaced again. We apologise to everyone on Islay for the loss of service.

Chair

When was it replaced?

Colin Scott

It was replaced in January, and it failed shortly after that.

Chair

There was a fault last summer and it took you 18 days to fix it. Let me start with that one. Why did it take 18 days to fix that fault last summer?

Paul Morris

Generally what happens with all sites is that there is a process of discovering what is wrong. That can be a number of things. It could be a connection to the site. It could be radio equipment. It could be misalignment of microwave dishes or antennae, so it sometimes takes some time, and the further away it is means we need to get people there as well from the major centres in Scotland. That is why it sometimes takes time. We get people on site quite quickly. The time it takes is often a combination of that and checking what the problem actually is. These sites are all interconnected. Sometimes we get there and think, “This is the site which is the problem.” We do a lot of work on the site and then discover that actually it is also the site next door, so we have to go to that site. As you know—because of course you know the geography—sometimes we can be on two different islands looking at the link. There are some complications. It is a combination, and we are continually looking at whether we can do better, as we certainly are over what happened in January. It was weather, but can we do better?

Chair

You still have not answered the specific question of why it took 18 days last summer to repair the fault on Islay. This was in June/July so it was not really weather related. I thought the Clerks had told you to read over the e-mails that you received from us, so I hoped you would come prepared to answer these questions.

Paul Morris

With Islay it was the fixed link. It was the link first and then we couldn’t—

Chair

What happened?

Paul Morris

We thought it was the link.

Chair

That was the link to where?

Paul Morris

The link that links the site to other sites. It is a broadband link.

Chair

Is it a fixed link?

Paul Morris

On Islay I think it is a fixed link, yes.

Chair

To another site on Islay.

Paul Morris

Then we triaged it and it was unclear whether it was a link that caused the radio equipment to break or the radio equipment that caused the link to go down. It was one of the two, but that took a bit of time to figure out. That has been the ongoing problem on Islay. Then we had the winter weather.

Chair

It took 18 days to work out what the fault was.

Colin Scott

There was a transmission kit failure. This is the fibre that is over the electricity wire, right at the top. I think it was 12 miles from the nearest road. It was not actually on the mainland and we had to get a fibre-wrapping machine to wrap the fibre round the earth cable on top of the pylons. These are really remote locations and very inaccessible, so it does take time. Obviously we would prefer to do much better than 18 days.

Chair

But can you explain why it did take 18 days?

Paul Morris

It was a combination of finding out what it was, getting the kit and getting people on site. Sometimes we cannot get on site immediately. All of those things can sometimes add up, and if it is a very difficult problem it can take 18 days. We obviously try to fix it much quicker than that. We have had a run of issues on Islay that are obviously still occurring today. The point is that in reality we are looking to replace some of the kit in cycle, and when that happens we should get more stability. When we start to roll out fibre in more parts of rural Scotland, that will also help, because we will use fibre as well as a mixture of microwave, which can also be vulnerable. That means there will be fewer links to each site.

Chair

Let us move on to the fault that happened on 11 December on Islay. Again that took 18 days to repair. Why was that?

Paul Morris

It was a similar problem.

Chair

The same problem as in the summer happened again.

Paul Morris

Yes.

Chair

I thought you had fixed it in the summer.

Paul Morris

The thing is that you can fix it and then it can go wrong again. It is equipment out in the middle of nowhere, in remote areas, and it is just one of those things. The problem was fixed but I think that was again the radio equipment that went wrong.

Chair

You think.

Paul Morris

It was the radio equipment, but again it is difficult to tell because if—

Chair

Why did it go wrong again five months after you had repaired it?

Paul Morris

The kit is coming to the end of its life. That is why we are replacing it. It sometimes goes wrong.

Chair

When are you going to replace it?

Paul Morris

We are replacing all the kit and all of the upgrades across the whole of the UK over the next couple of years. We are in the process of planning the rural areas now.

Chair

Since Islay has all these problems should it not be given priority for this repair?

Paul Morris

The challenge there is that the network is rolled out in packages. If we cannot get the internet connections to the site, we cannot deliver. This is the problem the MIC programme has been having.

Chair

So you are blaming Brendan for not providing the internet connection.

Paul Morris

No. They are all interlinked. The reality is that rural areas will need those connections—

Chair

Are you waiting for BT’s broadband upgrade on Islay?

Paul Morris

For fast mobile internet at least we will need some of those fixed links to be closer to where they are at the moment. We are as reliant on Openreach as everybody, frankly. Everybody is reliant on Openreach to deliver internet connectivity, be that mobile or fixed.

Chair

Have you checked with BT that their plans for Islay mean that you will be able to implement that upgrade fairly soon?

Paul Morris

Certainly we will be involved with BT, and our programme will be mapped to that. It will be part of that roll-out. It will be rolled out, I am afraid, from cities, towns and then the rural areas. That is the way the plan works.

Chair

You repaired it on 29 December. According to my records, it failed again on 12 January.

Paul Morris

That was the weather. There were winds and all the rest of it. That was caused by the storms.

Chair

You were a bit quicker this time. It took 14 days to repair.

Paul Morris

Yes.

Chair

It has now failed again, apparently.

Paul Morris

Yes. It was only yesterday, so we are trying to get it up and running quickly.

Chair

Can you understand why your customers on Islay are feeling a bit upset?

Paul Morris

Yes, of course. It is not what we would want. The reality is that we have a commitment to get people out there as soon as possible and to fix the problem as soon as possible.

Chair

But it seems as if it is costing you a lot of money repeatedly having to send people out to fix the problem.

Paul Morris

Yes.

Chair

Obviously people are not making calls so you are not getting money in.

Paul Morris

Yes.

Chair

Why?

Paul Morris

The truth is that, with the way the replacement equipment works, there is not a lot of point putting in brand-new equipment that cannot work until we can put in equipment for everything. That is basically what we are doing.

Chair

Are you saying that until BT provide you with this internet connection there are just going to be repeated failures on Islay?

Paul Morris

No. We will repair it and hopefully we will have a good run.

Chair

Hopefully? Come on, can you not do a proper repair?

Paul Morris

The site is flagged, and it is being monitored all the time. We have thousands and thousands of sites in the UK. It is no accident that we are on that site today. We are monitoring that site. We know that we have not delivered the service we would want to deliver. We are watching that site all the time. You continue to tell us if and when there are issues. Customer feedback is important. We will repair that site if there are issues. Of course, we are hoping that frankly this repair means that it will not go wrong again. When you repair something you hope that.

Chair

Given that this is the fourth time in the last year that you have repaired it, what makes you think you will be more successful this time?

Paul Morris

To be honest, in January it was weather conditions.

Chair

Islay gets strong winds every January.

Paul Morris

Every time you put in a repair, clearly you are not repairing it for it to break again. We will do all the tests we can and we are watching the site. It is one of our flagged sites because we know we have had a lot of trouble with it. All I can say to you is that we will repair it to the best of our ability and we will monitor it to the best of our ability. That will hopefully mean that it will be up and running and we will not have any problems.

Chair

To summarise, you do not anticipate solving the problem properly until BT provide you with this internet connection. Until then you will just keep patching it up. Is that a fair comment?

Paul Morris

We have had a bad run, but up to this point it has run okay over the years. Hopefully, we will continue to run a good service off the island for the period of time until we replace the equipment, which will basically provide better connectivity in terms of mobile internet and new equipment. It is not that we are not doing anything; we are doing all we can to keep the service running.

Chair

Until BT give you this internet connection you are doing the best you can without that internet connection. Is that what you are saying?

Paul Morris

We cannot really do much more with mobile internet and other connectivities without—

Chair

People just want to be able to make phone calls.

Paul Morris

We can and should be doing that.

Chair

But you are not.

Paul Morris

We cannot today. We will get an update and tell you at the end of this meeting. Hopefully people will be able to make phone calls by the end of the day.

Chair

It is not just this mast in Islay. There is a station on Mull that seems to be key to all the islands round about. Is that correct?

Paul Morris

Yes.

Chair

On Luing—the neighbouring island between Mull and Islay—the service went down on 12 January. I was told yesterday that it was fixed, but as soon as I contacted somebody from the island they told me that it was not. Do you have any idea when—

Paul Morris

That is up and running again. I think it was fixed on Monday.

Chair

It failed on 12 January. It must have been the same failure that affected the Islay mast, or maybe it was just the same storm. It was supposedly fixed on 16 March, which was Monday. When I reported this back to somebody on the island they told me yesterday, “No, it has not been fixed.”

Colin Scott

This is the one that the first responders went to. We are aware of it.

Chair

That was 12 January to 16 March. Why so long?

Colin Scott

Again, it is conditions. It has taken time. There have been a lot of spare part issues, trying to get things fixed. There is also the access to the island. The site in Mull was the one I referred to earlier, where our engineers were stuck for three days without a change of clothes. They were trying to get up that coastline—

Chair

That was three days. From 12 January to 16 March, off the top of my head, is 60-odd days.

Colin Scott

It is unacceptable and we apologise. It is obviously not in our interests to deliver poor service to customers.

Chair

That is what I question. Because it is a remote area with a low population, presumably you get very few calls made. Have you just decided that the cost of carrying out the repair is more than the cost of the calls you will lose?

Colin Scott

Absolutely not. We do not make that judgment at all. We try to get to all our cell sites, regardless of whether they are in central Glasgow, central London or Argyll and Bute.

Chair

I cannot believe central London being without Vodafone for 60 days.

Colin Scott

There are a lot more cell sites. Unfortunately in Argyll and Bute, local communities tend to rely on one site and when that goes down they feel the impact more than in a city centre location.

Paul Morris

To be honest, the damage to our reputation is sometimes louder in your areas. You think we do not focus on this, but I can tell you that we very much focus on it.

Chair

There was a fault on the mainland which took a long time to repair. Again that was probably caused by the storm on 12 January. Can you explain that?

Colin Scott

Whereabouts in Argyll and Bute?

Chair

It seemed to be centred on Lochgilphead and Ardrishaig. I certainly e-mailed you about it. I never got an explanation.

Paul Morris

We had 200 sites that went down in that period, so it would have been a combination of things.

Chair

Do you think it was the storm?

Paul Morris

Yes. The storm knocked out 200 sites.

Chair

But you don’t have any explanation handy.

Paul Morris

Not on that one, no. We can certainly get you information for particular sites.

Chair

To summarise, are you telling me that the equipment is out of date and not worth replacing because you are going to be doing an upgrade in a year or two anyway? Is that a fair summary?

Colin Scott

When a part fails we replace it with a new part. We are not putting in old parts.

Chair

But it keeps on failing though.

Colin Scott

It is just 2G generation kit we are putting in. When the site is upgraded it will be 4G kit. It is more resilient than for 2G and 3G.

Paul Morris

Newer kit is going in, but the whole kit is going in. At the moment we are repairing individual faults. We are investing to put in new radio equipment across the board, which will be for all technologies.

Chair

Am I right in saying that you are replacing old parts with new parts, but presumably some other old part in the equipment then fails? Is that a fair assumption?

Colin Scott

Most of this kit is fairly reliable. It is just that there have been some unfortunate chains of events, and some areas have been affected more than others. We have put in new parts, but when the site is upgraded there will be a completely new cell site.

Paul Morris

A lot of what happened for us in January was energy—power outages—which means that it is not necessarily the equipment that fails, although it can cause the equipment to have a failure. If it goes down, the batteries last for six hours and if it is out for a long period of time what can happen is that some of the sites will go up but some have to be visited to reinstall. It is not just water, or radio equipment breaking. Sometimes it is issues like that.

Chair

Why can’t you have batteries that last longer than six hours?

Paul Morris

Some of this is the standard kit on the site. We also use generators. You don’t really expect—

Chair

But from what you have said it is going to take a lot longer than six hours to carry out the repair, so why not have batteries that last longer?

Paul Morris

We are also looking at things like generators to make sure—

Chair

Why not do that?

Paul Morris

That is one of the things we are looking at. We are making sure that that is in place. On most sites six-hour batteries are usually okay, because you do not get power outages for that long.

Chair

But in rural Argyll it can be out for a lot longer.

Colin Scott

Again, that is part of the challenge—trying to get a generator to the site if it is off-road. Sometimes these are helicopter installations, so it is a big undertaking.

Paul Morris

It is one of the things we are looking at as well—that side of things. Equally, just to give you an example, some of the problems we get are not necessarily kit breaking.

Chair

One other problem that seems to arise is dropped calls. Can you explain what happens there? I think at one point the mast was supposed to have been repaired but then there were dropped calls. Can you explain how a dropped call happens?

Paul Morris

Dropped calls can be caused by a number of issues, including the handset; but if a site is not working at full capacity in a rural area it could cause dropped calls. It can be a number of issues, and that can be one of them.

Chair

Until this new internet link comes, do you think people in Islay will see a better service? Are you going to give priority to faults in Islay?

Paul Morris

We already are, yes.

Chair

This is a priority.

Paul Morris

If the kit works, it is fairly good. It is not perfect, and I know you will tell me it is not perfect, but we can give reasonable voice coverage there. Our intention is to deliver that service until we upgrade, and then to deliver a better service including mobile internet. That is our intention.

Chair

Do these faults get reported to Ofcom?

Paul Morris

Overall, yes. We communicate overall coverage stats, because we obviously get judged on that for our spectrum licences. It is things like dropped calls and all that sort of thing.

Chair

Would the specific situation on Islay be reported to Ofcom, or is it just UK-wide statistics?

Paul Morris

It is generally UK-wide. We also get requests, to be honest; we can be asked on an individual basis as well.

Chair

When I wrote to Ofcom they replied: “When a security or availability incident occurs which has a significant impact on the operation of a network or service, the legislation also requires the provider to report this to Ofcom.”

Paul Morris

Yes.

Chair

What do you interpret as a significant impact?

Paul Morris

That is a good question. Let me come back on that. To be honest, I do not know. The question is whether the outage in January was significant enough that we should have informed Ofcom. I actually do not know the answer to that. What we generally do is inform Ofcom about the things they ask us, but they ask us about quite a few issues.

Chair

According to this letter from Ofcom, there is a duty on yourselves to report to them.

Paul Morris

Yes, I just do not know the scale, that is all.

Chair

You do not know whether this was reported to them or not.

Paul Morris

I do not know the scale.