We’re testing a DSL ordering system at the moment by trying to order a new DSL circuit into our London Datacenter. This involves talking to BT Openreach, albeit via our third party. This is where it gets interesting.
BT Openreach, the part of BT responsible for the exchanges and the physical copper that comes to your door, has an address matching system. You get a bronze, silver or gold match depending on whether BT Openreach already knows about the address (gold), whether Openreach doesn’t but it can find it in the Post Office database (silver) or not at all (bronze). Problem is that unless you have a gold match, you can’t book an engineer and since it’s a datacenter and there’s special site instructions for access and location, we want a match.
So, in goes the address for Redbus Sovereign House. Excellent – 3 Gold match addresses. We chose the top one and Simon and I stop for a second and blink. The address is <some ISP>, Floor 8, Telecity Redbus, Sovereign House, Marsh Wall, London. Problem with that is that Sovereign House only has 5 floors.
But it’s a gold match. So we booked it. Now we wait for the Engineer to call us when he arrives on site. “Er, hi, this order. Um, I can’t find the location listed…”