Eircom has “significantly improved” performance in meeting targets for providing leased lines to other licensed operators, according to the Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg).
The regulator issued a paper today which reviews Eircom’s performance since the carrier services service level agreement SLA was revised last year. Average delivery times for leased lines remain at 20 days or below since this time last year. This marks a significant improvement on previously; in 2001, average delivery timeframes were between 50 and 70 days.
The SLA regime has its origins in the situation in 1999 when Ireland had one of the longest lead times in Europe for the delivery of leased lines. Today’s report referred to a ECTA seminar held last year, where the “extraordinary improvements” in delivery of leased lines since then were largely attributed to the effectiveness of the “stringent” SLA regime.
The report also noted a significant improvement in Eircom’s due date performance; that is, the frequency with which Eircom delivers a circuit according to the date committed to the OLO during the ordering stage. The former state telecoms operator had committed to achieving a staged improvement in due date performance which saw it reaching a target of 80pc by the end of 2001 and 95pc by the end of 2002.
Process point compliance – the set of delivery processes underpinning each element of end-to-end delivery of a circuit – is consistently at the 95pc level, the findings showed. ComReg cited the importance of certainty around delivery schedules. Under its revised SLA, it added the incentive that delivery penalties would be waived if Eircom was successful in delivering 95pc of orders to an individual telco in a particular quarter.
ComReg has indicated that it may extend the current reporting requirements to include Eircom’s performance in relation to fault management parameters and will be discussing with the telco when and how this can be achieved. In a statement, ComReg said that much has been achieved over the last number of years, but it nonetheless wished to ensure that Eircom continues to deliver these services in a timely fashion.
