Giganet Local/National ELITE Leased Line Order Process (Openreach fibre tails)

This article concerns ELITE (leased line) orders where the physical fibre tail into your premises is provided by (BT) Openreach. Many carriers use Openreach fibre tails as part of their 'final-mile' delivery. Openreach only sell wholesale to carriers, like Giganet and our carriers.

During your Giganet ELITE order, we like to keep our customers up to date with as much information on where the installation is.

When your order reaches a key milestone, we will send you an email and/or phone notification with the details and what the next steps are.

The Key milestones you can typically expect to hear from us are the following:

1. Order placed
   
   • This is confirmation that we have placed the order with our carrier or Openreach direct (in the case of Giganet Local ELITE services).
   • It will usually be 5-10 working days before they then get in touch to confirm the next steps which involve the survey & planning.
2. Desktop survey complete - optional
   • In this update we will include details, where available, on the order category Openreach deem your installation to be within.
   • It will also include information on any indicative excess construction charges or time related charges if they can estimate at this stage, it is unusual for us to get these details through at this stage though.
   • We will also likely try to arrange a physical site survey so the engineers can confirm their desktop survey findings. If we're arranging a survey, we are more likely to call your primary contact initially. 
3. Planning completed
   • This milestone will come after the physical survey has taken place and Openreach have planned and priced up the work required to get the ELITE connection installation completed at your premises. This will include any final excess construction charges and time related charges, where applicable. If there are any excess construction charges or time related charges we will need to then send an agreement detailing these and you will need to confirm that you’re happy to proceed with the order on this basis. If they are not approved Openreach will automatically cancel your order after 30 days. If you do not want to continue with the order due to the excess charges then you can cancel at this stage penalty free.
4. Planning Confirmed
   • This update comes after we have agreed any excess construction charges or Time related charges with you (where applicable). This will include a target completion date, this date is to give a rough idea as it can change, despite Openreach’s best efforts. This could be due to delays beyond their control or unexpected complications that arise during the build phase.
5. Infrastructure build complete
   • This means that all that is left to arrange now is for the fibre to be blown into your premises and terminated. This is sometimes done on one visit, and sometimes they are done separately. They need a jointing visit for blowing the fibre and a ‘fit and test’ visit to install their network terminating equipment and to test that the connection is working as they would expect.
6. Order complete 
   • Finally after the fit and test visit has been successfully completed we will send an email confirmation when Openreach have handed the leased line circuit over to us and our Giganet engineers have configured your connection remotely on our network. This will include details of how to install our router that we would have previously shipped out to you.
7. Customer Delays
   • Sometimes there are aspects that can cause delays to the order. If this happens we will make you aware of what it is. Sometimes the delays are beyond your control but sometimes delays can be caused by the customer. Delay causes can include wayleaves, permissions, road closures/crossings required, but it can also be where Openreach are waiting on the end customer to return paper work etc.
8. Early Handover
   • When you sign your contract with us you will have detailed a required by date, this date is the date that you would ideally like the ELITE connection installed by. On some occasions Openreach will have completed the installation ahead of the required by date, if this circumstance arises they give us the option to take over the circuit early. We will make you aware of this and it’s up to you if you would like to or not. If we take it on early they will start to bill straight away. If you don’t want it any earlier than your required by date then they won’t hand it over to us until that point.
9. Quick Win Installation
   • Sometimes if there is no infrastructure build required to get the ELITE connection installed to your premises Openreach will categorise this as a ‘quick win’. This means that usually the installation can go ahead quicker than the average leased line order. With Quick Wins, as a lot of the process isn’t necessary, you won’t get all of the same updates that you ordinarily would. For more information on a quick win installation please click here.
10. Missed appointment
    • Inevitably there are missed appointments, sometimes due to the customer and sometimes due to Openreach. Despite Openreach’s best endeavours there are sometimes unforeseen circumstances, like engineer illness, appointments overrunning or even an engineer having an accident. They do try to organise an alternative engineer to visit if this happens, but unfortunately it isn’t always possible. If Openreach do arrive at your premises and they are prevented access or there is no one at the site, for example, they will attempt to contact your primary and secondary contacts, failing this, they will contact us, and we will also attempt to contact you. Depending on the outcome of the phone call(s) the engineer will try to wait as long as possible (at least 15 minutes) to avoid failing the appointment. If there is a failed appointment then there will be an abortive visit charge for this, to cover the engineer’s time, you, as the end customer, would be liable for any abortive visit charges.
11. Suspended order
    • sometimes is appropriate for us to suspend the order for you, we will confirm this in an email. You can only suspend an order up until a certain point of the process. Customers reasons for requesting to suspend the order can differ, but an example would be to allow them more time to consider any excess construction charges. You can suspend an order for a maximum of 90 days, before Openreach will automatically cancel the order. If the order is cancelled and you subsequently wanted to go ahead we would need to start the order process again.

Please be aware that sometimes Openreach will use contractors to carry out some of their build work and they will likely contact you, as the end customer, directly to arrange on site visits that could be required. It’s also worth mentioning that where Openreach or their contractors are contacting you directly you may be provided information that is not always communicated to us as well. The reason we have Openreach contact you directly is to make the process as efficient as possible to speed up lead times.