CEO of Simwood, Simon Woodhead, made his thoughts known in an open letter to Ofcom as the rest of the industry has managed to follow their Business Continuity plans and remain able to port numbers.
Responding to the news on LinkedIn one reseller, Nick Brandon from Tecwork-VoIP said "We have ports going through tomorrow and next week. Our customers are looking forward to us finally provisioning soft phone and smart phone apps so their staff can safely work at home." He added "I am thinking we may just cancel for fear of losing service for the customers which would obviously be a disaster."
"This is outrageous.....BT Openreach are yet again the 'untouchables' that do not operate in the same reality that everyone else does. They have not changed In the 25 years I have had the misfortune to have to rely on them."
Confirmed from a call with the OTA, BT has indicated they are working on a 'plan b' which they will publish later today.
Woodhead wrote on his blog... "The summary is “we don’t know, but we’re working on plan b”. That was the answer to almost every question, regarding orders in flight, customer end of contracts leading to loss of service, faults etc."
The silver lining, if there is one, the automated system may complete some of those ports already in the system. Stay tuned for updates on the situation.
UPDATE: Openreach has recently sent an email out to customers regarding the situation:
The email reads:
"Our current service is significantly impacted, during this time there will be delays in responses however we are standing up additional agent resource with the aim to return to as near a business as usual service as possible on data actions by early next week. We will address existing backlogs and focussing on activation delays with potential loss of service as a priority.
In the interim we ask that the escalation channel is not used unless the port involves a welfare case or potential loss of service.Voice routes will remain closed until further notice."