Are BT slowly imploding?

I have a suspicion that BT is a company in crisis. It isn't necessarily reflected in their financial performance (yet) and they probably don't know it; at least senior management probably don't. So where do I draw such a conclusion from?

Well here are a some unrelated anecdotal thoughts. firstly there's the fact internet connection speeds haven't changed, for most of us, for the past few years. The best anyone can get on a BT exchange line is using ADSL2+. Speeds are a long way from matching offerings in other countries and and BT seem in no hurry to offer the next level of improvement, which required running fibre to the cabinet (fttc) or even fibre to your house... that would be nice. Ok, there's BT Infinity which is a fttc service, but roll out of that is slow at best; in many areas there's no hint as to when it might arrive. Meanwhile in cable areas Virgin Media are offering much faster internet services than BT.

Then there's the fact that when an organisation like the BBC buys a short term ISDN line, for which they pay about £1k, BT offer no meaningful level of service guarantee or support level.

I witnessed this recently. The first thing that surprised me was the BT engineer who installed the line spent longer on hold to the service centre than I would have been prepared to wait. Apparently this is normal. He turns up on site, does the work, then spends an age on hold so he can ask someone to activate the circuit. When their own staff spend as long as the customers on hold, there's something wrong with how things are managed.

This time last year, at the same event, the ISDN circuit failed. BT were contacted. Three days later, long after the line was needed, BT turned up on site to fix it. In years gone by a BT man stayed on site to deal with any problems that may arise. Not any more. Goodbye customer service.

A while ago there was quite significant deregulation of the comms industry, and this forced allowed third party companies to site equipment in BT exchanges, the so called Local Link Unbundling. This is what led to faster domestic internet speeds. BT were forced to raise their game, they certainly didn't want to. Now the same thing is happening with more of BT's infrastructure, particularly the telegraph poles and street cabinets. Again BT are resisting this by allowing access only after making exorbitant charges.

It seems BT don't consider the 1400 households where I live to be worthy of any improved connectivity. It's only a matter of time though before someone else does. 

If BT don't want to provide good customer service, improve connectivity or be willing partners with those who do, the company will slowly decline. 

I think we're seeing that happening now. It'll be interesting to see where we are in five years time.