The UFB Product Forum has recognised that there is currently no agreed industry processes to support the smooth install of a new customer at a new address where there is an existing tenancy or an existing intact connection that is preventing a new service being connected.
In the current market, the industry has identified scenarios of where an ‘abandoned Intact’ can occur. By way of definition, 'abandoned Intact' is a situation where a pre-existing intact connection owned by the previous tenant of a property prevents the new in flight order from another RSP and different end user from being connected.
Fibre abandoned Intact connections can occur in a variety of situations but not all are truly abandoned. Often, there is simply a time lag in the disconnection request appearing with the LFC from the departing customer's RSP, or in the case of copper services, between the Network Operator and the RSP. The instances of true abandoned intact scenarios occurring for fibre, is currently low volume/high impact. However, as more end customers migrate from copper to fibre, it is expected that the scale of this issue will increase.
Previously, the UFB Product Forum established a sub-group to investigate further and their study defined a range of scenarios across the industry and noted there was no standard process across all four LFCs to deal with these. Subsequently, the sub-group made a recommendation that an industry Code be established to define the process and which would align to the customer transfer code for fibre.
The TCF Board has approved a proposal from the UFB Product Forum to establish a working party to review the abandon intact connection process and develop a TCF Code which would consider:
- both copper and fibre abandon intact connection processes
- alignment to the customer transfer process
- the issues presented by Multiple Service Provider (Primary vs. Secondary) scenarios for UFB
This Working Party has now been established and the project scope is being developed.
