I was told last night, that ntl are currently conducting an audit of all "spare" network plant and equipment located in technician/engineers vehicles and buildings. I was told anyone who lies and keeps equipment back/hidden could face disciplinary action, as this equipment will all be returned to a central store.
The offshoot of this is that an engineer attending a network outage for any service, will have to diagnose the faulty piece of equipment and then request one to be sent out via DHL...... No this is not a late April fools joke as far as I know!
I wonder how quick the turnaround is, and I wonder if they have thought about the cost of an engineer having to be called out/return a second time when the replacement equipment actually arrives on site?
I think it just goes to show what a bad financial state ntl is in, the guys said they are looking at every corner to cut costs. Some regions are desaperately short of spare equipment, and this is their only answer.
There appears to be no thought towards the service level for customers who will be affected by much longer service outages whilst waiting for equipment to arrive from a central stores via a parcel firm.
Bean counters strike again.
