Virgin Media, Sky, TalkTalk, BT and Zen Internet have reached a deal with Openreach whereby customers will receive £8 in compensation for every day outages occur and take longer than 48-hours to fix. Compensation will rise to £25 if an engineer that is supposed to fix the issue does not arrive on time or cancels 24-hours ahead of when they were meant to fix it. An additional £5-per-day compensation has been agreed for when new services offered by the UK providers do not begin at the time specified. The deal was initially reached last year, but Openreach has now agreed with internet service providers how much it will reimburse them for the compensation they pay to customers. In addition to Virgin Media, Sky, TalkTalk, BT and Zen Internet, both EE and Plusnet have hinted they could also join the agreement. However, nothing regarding additional participants has been officially confirmed. Ofcom laid out the compensation payout rates for customers in its voluntary automatic compensation code of practice that arrived in November 2017. After displaying the new rates, the regulator insisted it could take as long as 15 months for its new system to be fully implemented. This means customers may not see the benefits of the new agreement until next year. Openreach emphasised it would not pay compensation for outages in "measures beyond reasonable control", according to the BBC. This means in situations such as intense flooding the internet provider may not receive a pay out for imbursing customers. Ofcom has confirmed with Express.co.uk that in all instances of broadband outages, customers will receive the compensation outlined. However, the telecommunications company did state it would award compensation where other people prevent matters from being fixed, meaning if a car is parked in front of required cabinet customers would still benefit. Customers using broadband at home will be able to claim, as will small and medium-size businesses. Commenting on the agreement, a spokesman for Ofcom said: "We're pleased this agreement has been reached, following our intervention to secure automatic compensation for customers facing problems such as delays and missed appointments." Openreach added: "We have fully supported Ofcom's voluntary code of practice since its inception, and are pleased to have reached an agreement with those communication providers intending to offer automatic compensation." The compensation arrangement also applies to landline outages, too.
Ofcom has set the rates for reimbursements in relation to the customer compensation scheme agreed between Openreach and companies such as Ofcom each day . The payments cover broadband outages and delays to the delivery of new services. Compensation of £8 ($ 25 ) will be payable to customers for each day outages occur and take longer than 48 hours to fix, rising to £ 25 if an engineer fails to arrive on time. The regulator said it could take last year for the new scheme to be implemented.