Sky (Easynet) are reportedly trialling a Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) system in East London, which according to ZDnet doesn’t involve any customers but is more of a “proof of concept” trial of sub-loop unbundling (SLU).
SLU involves Openreach making available tie pairs at the street cabinet level, allowing 3rd party operators to connect ADSL or
We’ve received an awful lot of emails over the past few days from people keen to find out when Be Unlimited and O2 will be offering services in their area. The sudden upsurge in this email traffic is of course because the June 30th RFS (Ready For Service) date for around 150 exchanges has passed.
The BBC News website reports criticism by analyst Ian Fogg that BT Openreach’s forthcoming fibre trial at Ebbsfleet will be “too slow”. He opines that a trial should use the fastest technology available.
BT are of course trialling the product they plan to launch as opposed to running trials on the fibre technology itself. Their FTTH
OFCOM have opened a consultation looking at the future pricing structure for BT’s Openreach division.
Openreach owns and runs the BT “local loop” copper network and charges other divisions of BT and other operators for use of the lines. As the local loop is an effective monopoly the pricing is regulated by OFCOM.
Currently the prices charged
The growth of local loop unbundling (LLU) in the past 18 months has undoubtedly been explosive. In the last quarter alone there were over 600,000 LLU connections provisioned. But all of this growth is taking its toll on the physical capacity of the exchanges themselves. Indeed, many exchanges in London now have nearly ten separate
BT Wholesale have at last released the schedule for the first 868 exchanges to be activated for Wholesale Broadband Connect, their new 21CN broadband product. The new product will bring ADSL2+ nationwide, but may take until 2012 to reach the most remote areas of the UK.
At present we’re seeing 39 exchanges enabled for WBC already,
Whilst some of the larger LLU operators such as Sky and O2 may be slowing their roll out, many of the smaller operators are accelerating rapidly.
Entanet this week provided us with a list of 18 exchanges they intend to launch their LLU-based “Ethernet First Mile” service at. This service, first launched in October 2007 at
NewNet have today provided us with an updated roll-out plan of their 24Mbps ADSL2+ LLU services. Back in July we noted with interest that they were looking to expand out of the Portsmouth area; this updated plan is the first indication that this is moving forward.
The full list is as follows:
Portsmouth - Live now
Fareham -
Last month we reported that eighteen exchanges in Scotland were being upgraded, either by having full ADSL installed or by having additional “Exchange Activate” capacity added. We now hear that a further four exchanges are being upgraded to full ADSL and another ten are being given additional Exchange Activate capacity.
The four additional exchanges to receive
The brand new Haydon Wick exchange finally came online this week after repeated delays. The exchange has been built to “accommodate growth in the area following commencement of a significant building development” (See original BT Openreach announcement from April).
About 2500 lines are being transferred from the neighbouring Blunsdon exchange. The following phone number prefixes will
The Scottish Executive has identified 18 exchanges that are suffering capacity issues and will be upgrading these between now and February 2008. All of these exchanges received ADSL as a part of BT’s Exchange Activate scheme, which has brought ADSL to around 150 exchanges (nearly all of which are in Scotland).
Unfortunately, Exchange Activate limits those
Carphone’s targeted rollout of 1,000 exchanges just over a year ago has already been surpassed. No less than 1,134 exchanges have been unbundled now. What’s potentially even more interesting is that they are targetting a further 500 exchanges by March 2008 (see page 36 of CPW’s annual strategy day PDF). Also of interest in the
If 2006 truly was the “year of LLU”, then it appears that someone forgot to tell Be* (O2), Easynet (Sky) and Carphone Warehouse (TalkTalk) that we’re now in 2007. All three companies have started 2007 with the same fervour as they finished 2006 with.
LLU deployment in the past 12 months
It was under three weeks ago
The recent press around BT’s pending 21CN rollout has resulted in quite a lot of interest in the subject. One of the most common requests we’ve had in the past week is for a map of the planned rollout…. So here it is!
The following map depicts the planned rollout, with the nearest dates shaded green
Edge Telecom are planning to rollout their LLU ADSL2+ services to a further 37 exchanges nationwide. For those of you unfamiliar with Edge, they bought Trilogy Telecom from administrators in 2005. Trilogy had caused quite a stir in 2004 when they began offering ADSL2+ on a series of Cambridgeshire exchanges that BT had deemed unviable.
Edge’s
It seems like the LLU providers are all dead set on reaching their autumn coverage targets. Bulldog and Easynet have rolled out 68 and 44 new exchanges respectively this week. Rumour has it that another major LLU player is about to embark upon a new deployment plan as well. Those of you who are particularly
Last week Be Unlimited worried more than a handful of end users when they removed nearly all the future enablement dates for exchanges from their website. However, they’re now back in force, with some 562 exchanges due to be unbundled in the future. A call with Be today has confirmed that this delay was just
I remember noting a few months back in the news how static Easynet’s LLU deployment was, while at the same time Bulldog and Be were steaming ahead with new exchanges. Well, the tables seem to have turned now! Easynet have brought 124 exchanges online for the LLU service in the past 28 days, whereas Bulldog
The Telegraph is this morning reporting that mobile group O2, itself recently purchased by Telefonica, has bought LLU operator Be Un Limited for £50m. The fact that O2 has been looking to acquire an LLU operator has been common knowledge for some time, as they have been tied to potential deals with both Bulldog and
The rumour mill has been working overtime for the last 12 hours since ZDNet published an article claiming that Bulldog were leaving the retail market and were instead going to resume offering wholesale products again. This morning Cable & Wireless, Bulldog’s parent company, has confirmed the story in their announcement.
In summary, from 1st July 2006