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Unbundling reaches 3m
(10-09-07) - Local loop unbundling (LLU) has reached three million lines, but the number of dead-on-arrival lines is still far too high, according to new figures.
The Office of the Telecommunications Adjudicator (OTA) published its August update, showing that LLU had reached 2.997 million lines. However, it also pointed out that the provision of fully unbundled lines - where an ISP takes over provision of both telephone and broadband - currently has a 20 per cent failure rate.
Repair rates painted an even worse picture, with between 20 and 30 per cent of repairs across partially and fully unbundled lines, and rented wholesale lines failing.
Wholesale line rental (WHL) - where a provider leases the line from BT in order to supply calls and line rental - stood at 4.33 million lines and carrier Pre-Selection - where a cheaper provider supplies your call package over your BT line - was at 5.81 million lines.
Despite the problems still faced by LLU, it does offer very cheap broadband, allowing providers such as TalkTalk (www.TalkTalk.co.uk) and Sky (www.Sky.com) to offer free broadband to customers on their call plans, and Tiscali (www.Tiscali.co.uk) to offer free line rental to its fully unbundled customers.
LLU saw a very poor second quarter with the addition of new lines falling from 590,000 in the first three months of the year, to 510,000 between April and July as BT concentrated on repairing lines damaged by flooding across the UK. But things picked up in July with a record 250,000 new lines and an estimated 300,000 in August, doubling total numbers in just over six months.
However, Michael Phillips warned that customers switching to fully unbundled lines still face difficulties if they decide to switch back to the BT network. “Providers need to be more transparent about the migration problems that customers face trying to get away from an LLU provider.
“It costs somewhere in the region of £30,000 to unbundled a single exchange,” he explained, “so ISPs are keen to move as many people as possible to LLU. But it can then be difficult and costly to get away again, and customers will almost certainly face a break in their connection.”
The OTA said that as the Simultaneous Provide Process (SPP) gains ground and more providers adopt the Openreach Equivalence Management Platform (EMP), migrating away from an LLU provider should become easier. Customers can check with potential providers to see if they have adopted the SPP and Openreach EMP - which most should have by the end of the year.
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