About Community Fibre
Community Fibre are a leading Internet Service Provider operating in the Greater London area. They are rated London’s #1 Internet Service Provider on Trustpilot with more than 34,000 reviews. Community Fibre are currently the UK’s 4th Largest Full Fibre provider with over 1.3M homes able to access their network and currently have over 250,000 subscribed customers.
Background
Community Fibre Limited (CFL) have been rolling out one of the largest fibre networks in the UK using a combination new infrastructure as well as utilising the OR PIA (Physical Infrastructure Access) product which allows registered communications providers (CP’s) to install their network within Openreach duct and poles.
During network deployment encountering challenges such as blockages or collapsed duct is an inevitability. Openreach offers to repair these with a 3+ month SLA or otherwise offers to compensate CPs’ a cash sum to repair blockages or defects on its PIA network themselves known as a SPO (Self Provide Order). ISPs must submit requests to clear blockages themselves through a network adjustment process whereby an A55 Form detailing the blockage is provided to the OR Team. Once the blockage is approved and subsequently cleared, the ISPs submit an A55b form evidencing the cleared blockage. Once approved, Openreach pay the Operator an agreed fee.
The Problem
In the past CFL and it’s incumbent supply chain partners used a combination of paper and generic mobile form apps or email/WhatsApp messaging with partners to capture the A55 and A55b data.
As a result of the manual nature of these forms, and the extensive amount of time taken in the back office to re-enter data and create the appropriate submissions to Openreach, only a limited number of A55 claims could be processed each month. Those that were processed had inconsistent evidence quality and detail meaning some were rejected by OR and many more were not even processed to begin with.
This meant that CFL where potentially leaving £millions unclaimed funds on the table with Openreach where blockages were not being claimed.
The Solution
CFL implemented the MapAll solution for Blockages in 2021. MapAll is a cloud service and mobile app, specifically designed for the fibre sector.
MapAll has been built with the A55 process in mind and therefore has all of the fields required. It has a very easy to use interface, resulting in a 100% user adoption rate.
By standardising the means of collection, collections requirements, evidence checklists and providing a real time geographic collection tool for both CFL and it’s supply chain partners it meant that all A55’s were able to be processed and collected at the same time as significantly increasing the quality of data being collected.
MapAll is also integrated with Openreach via API, making it far faster to submit forms. It has also been verbally acknowledged that having a consistent and repeatable format has allowed the OR Quality Team to review A55’s and A55B’s faster and more efficiently increasing volumes quality checked by OR in addition.
The Benefits
The benefits of MapAll to CFL are explained by Sam Bowtell, Head of Network Delivery at Community Fibre Infrastructure Partners (CFIP):
“As a result of the massive efficiency that MapAll provides, without increasing our team size, we have gone from managing 121 A55s per month to 659 A55s (a 400% increase) and from 213 A55Bs per month to 431 A55Bs (a 100% increase)”.
Sam also estimates that their A55 acceptance rate has increased from 50% to 98% as a result of MapAll.
Further benefits of the MapAll solution have been described by Sam Bowtell, Head of Network Delivery at Community Fibre Limited:
“As a direct result of using MapAll for recording blockages, CFL have been able to claim £millions from Openreach in the last 24 months.”
A55 acceptance rate
Increase in A55s managed per month
Increase in A55Bs managed per month
Conclusion
Community Fibre feels that the MapAll solution has raised the standard in the UK fibre business. As a result of the comprehensive evidencing via MapAll, this is now what Openreach expects by default from all Operators – he feels this has led to the whole industry raising their game with better workmanship.
Furthermore, CFL have increased their quality pass rate of all network adjustments (blockages and other activities) to 98% two years running with the help of MapAll. This has resulted in less fails, ongoing awards of the OR PTC (path to collaboration), and significant savings in personnel time.
It has also led to a greater level of quality from the CFL supply chain meaning that QC of blockages, new track and other synthetics are far quicker and have 100% provision of evidence which as produced savings for the company not directly attributed to the claiming of OR funds.
Through the use of MapAll CFL were able to increase 8-fold the amount of money claimed for blockages with 4 times more claims submitted and twice as many claims accepted.
