Broadband

BT Wholesale’s recently launched WBC (Wholesale Broadband Connect) service has suffered a setback this week as 440 exchange activation dates have been delayed and a further 320 have been removed from the schedule all together.

The new wholesale service from BT offers ADSL2+ end user connections and will eventually be available nationwide. Despite being launched in April, only Entanet and it’s resellers have adopted the service so far. Other ISPs are adopting a ‘wait and see’ approach - including BT-owned ISP PlusNet. It’s also quite likely that many larger ISPs who operate their own LLU networks will not adopt WBC for a long time yet, as their only interest will lay in exchanges beyond the reach of their own LLU network.

Before the latest setback there were 346 exchanges scheduled to offer the service to ISPs by the end of August 2008. Now there will be just 111. The majority of the dates have been pushed back three to four months, with those previously scheduled for August moving to November and those in November moving to February/March 2009.

Worryingly for some, 320 exchanges find themselves with no activation date at all after the changes. Note that this does not mean that BT have changed their minds and will not be bringing ADSL2+ to your exchange. Instead it’s likely that reasonable estimated dates cannot be made at this time, hence they’ve been removed from the schedule temporarily.

ADSL24, one of Entanet’s largest resellers and a keen promoter of the new “up to 24Mbps” packages were left unimpressed by the slips:

With Sky’s and O2’s ADSL2+ LLU networks now covering over 1000 exchanges, and the TalkTalk, Orange and Tiscali networks set to make the upgrade to ADSL2+ in the near future, it certainly looks like BT Wholesale have some catching up to do.

Tags: BT Wholesale, Entanet