We have recently received notification from BT Openreach that they have declared what they refer to as an MBORC in certain areas of the country. this has the potential to cause Broadband and Voice provisioning delays due to recent bouts of severe weather.

A copy of the notice follows:

"Following heavy snow falls and freezing temperatures in parts of Scotland Openreach is now declaring a matter beyond our reasonable control (MBORC)/force major event.

The declaration is effective from 08.00 today 3rd March 2010 and only applies where delays to provision and repair activities have been caused by the severe weather conditions in affected parts of Scotland.

The recent heavy snowfalls and freezing conditions in parts of Scotland over the last week have impacted Openreach by causing the reduced mobility of our engineering workforce particularly in remote areas.

This has resulted in a number of missed jobs and appointments. Whilst every effort has been made to contact those end users affected, we have not always been successful. We have carefully assessed the situation over the last few days and feel that we now have to declare MBORC due to the continuing severe conditions in the following regions:

- North East Scotland
- Tayside and Fife
- South East Scotland
- West Central Scotland

It should be stressed that it only applies to specific provision and repair activities delayed or prevented by the snow and freezing conditions.

We are, of course, doing all we can to minimise the impacts of these conditions and are working to restore affected services as quickly as possible.

We will continue to review this situation and will lift the MBORC as soon as service returns to normal."

We will provide another update as soon as we receive further information.

Kind Regards,

Bob Pullen
Customer Support