Broadband progress in 2007
It seems that at the beginning of each year someone somewhere heralds the coming year as being the “year of broadband”. 2007 was no different, with many predicting that LLU would truly take off. In many ways this has held true - there are now in excess of 3 million unbundled lines in the UK, and it can’t be long before the 4 million landmark is announced. This time last year Sky’s LLU services were brand new, Tiscali’s LLU TV service had not been launched, and O2’s service was barely a twinkle in the milkman’s eye. The only well embedded large scale LLU service belonged to TalkTalk.
Nowadays things are quite different. AOL, Tiscali, O2 (Be), Sky and Bulldog have all unbundled over 700 exchanges each. TalkTalk still maintain the coverage crown with over 1600 exchanges covered. A full graph depicting LLU expansion over the past 12 months can be found here. It is interesting to note that growth slowed noticeably in the last quarter of 2007, which is perhaps a knock-on effect of the issues affecting the global markets we’ve heard so much about.
The practice of simply offering bigger and faster connections (or at least bigger headlines figures…) has slowed in 2007 too, with providers such as Tiscali and BT taking the first steps to rollout nationwide TV over broadband. Whilst the customer numbers may not be what they were hoping for (See here and here), the fact that both O2 and Orange are looking to launch similar services in the near future suggests that they certainly believe it’s the way forward.
One of the other big topics that has caught my eye this year is BT’s 21CN. The sheer scale of the project has attracted a lot of media attention, and we’ve covered it extensively too. It’s worth noting that Wholesale Broadband Connect - the new 24Mbps ADSL2+ product from BT Wholesale - is being launched this Spring at an initial 84 exchanges (areas yet to be confirmed). There’s also discussion of BT Wholesale launching a WBC product based upon the Opeanreach FTTP (Fibre to the Premises) product.
21CN has attracted its fair share of criticisms too. BT’s alteration of migration plans and delays in releasing pricing and rollout schedules has annoyed ISPs. ISP involvement in BT’s Consult21 scheme has been surprisingly minimal until recently, which is perhaps a sign of the commitment the larger ISPs have to their LLU networks.
In 2008 we’ll continue to cover LLU and 21CN rollout, and hopefully continue to build new tools like the mapping engine. There’s also a few other new features in the mix, but if there’s anything you’d particularly like to see then I’d love to hear from you.
