We need broadband and fixed line telephone in the workshop.
Telecommunications are a vital service for the progress of mankind. It is appalling that the individual should be denied choice in the selection of a company that can connect or repair communication faults. The cost to our nations progress is colossal. Anyone who has tried to get an openreach engineer will understand this.
This week I have made 120 calls to my service provider BT trying to get an openreach engineer to connect 7 wires. The connection of these wires is important to me so much so it has become a personal crusade.
How can the nations productivity improve when a monopoly control the communications infrastructure. It reminds me so much of the environment I faced when trying to build a photocopier factory in Leningrad in 1990. Where there is no choice there is no progress.
George is so right in his analogy.
George Pitcher is an Anglican priest who serves his ministry at St Bride's, Fleet Street, in London – the "journalists' church".
He says and I quote "It seems to me that BT’s Open Reach is symptomatic of two service-industry ills in Britain. First, it’s a service company that has no direct customer contact; that’s a recipe for sub-soviet style arrogance and neglect. Second, it’s a symptom of the over-enthusiastic privatisation of the Eighties. BT was sold off effectively as a monopoly and has been pretending not to be one ever since to satisfy the regulator. That’s why Open Reach is allegedly “separate” from BT, but can behave with all the disdain for customer-service that the old nationalised industry had."
Back to my comment:
In the Soviet Union there was no concept of competition no advertising, no property ownership, no insurance, no carrots, no windscreen wipers, no tractors, no internet etc etc etc and no hope. Photocopiers were locked in guarded rooms and regarded as potential weapons against the state. Thatcher and Reagan knew that communications through satellite and internet would be an unstoppable conduit for change.
I witnessed this first hand. When choice is introduced freedom can develop and productivity can improve. These are lessons for us all so why can’t I buy the services of a telephone engineer to connect my phone.
There is no way to contact an openreach engineer they have a Soviet style monopoly and will not speak to end users. This monopoly must go if we are to progress and not be overtaken by our Russian friends who have seen the light.
Richard
very interesting !
ReplyDeleteI agree with this in fall no one talks to each other, i myself have forged contacts with the business and the shops all over the uk plus our customer service department's to keep everything moving swiftly .
ReplyDeleteregarding the family firms my dad is the biggest wholesale oyster and whelk company in the uk.
www.westwhelks.co.uk
and this is what i meant by understanding where you come from about communications, where ever i have been within the company i have strived to make it better and have done this all over the company including face to face, i get letters and emails from the people i help but nothing from bt, but this is not what i am after bt should be sorting it before it even gets to this point but once again like normal its lines its MD'S pockets and the customers have to wait for someone like me who wants to resolve it to resolve it.
it was a pleasure speaking to you and it was good to see an old fashioned business man stating the obvious (no offence this is what i saw you as and what i see my self as) customer service is king not the figures