Be, Bulldog, Easynet, Wanadoo and even HomeChoice have all been busy unbundling exchanges recently. There’s too many exchanges to list here so, I’ll just give a brief summary for each provider and refer you to the relevant provider page where you can see the full lists (ordered by enablement date).
Be Unlimited have been continuing their
Just under a year ago, Cable and Wireless announced their year-end results for March 2005. Within this they stated that they planned to have 600 exchanges unbundled by Bulldog by March 2006, and 800 by late autumn 2006. Anyone familiar with the figures though will know that Bulldog have remained static at around 410 exchanges
Easynet announced some time ago that they would be rolling out their LLU service to 750 exchanges by the end of the year. Well, after being idle at 232 exchanges for over a year, it now seems that they’ve begun the next stage of their rollout. Five London exchanges - Stamford Hill, Streatham, Kneller Hall,
After undergoing months of trials and forming the basis of endless speculation, Bulldog have finally launched their ADSL2+ services. Touted at running at 16Mbps downstream, with 1Mbps upsteam, the service is available at all of Bulldog’s unbundled exchanges (according to Bulldog’s FAQ).
It’s still unclear as to whether Bulldog are capping the product at 16Mbps or
The state of Tiscali’s LLU seems to be causing quite a stir on various forums, with many users interested in knowing whether or not their exchange will be a part of the rollout. We’re currently working to get a full exchange list, but in the mean time, one PlusNet user has posted a list of
Hats off to BT - All but one of the 5277 exchanges they planned to upgrade to ADSL Max by today were completed successfully. This includes all of the “Green”, “Amber” and even the “Red” classified exchanges. The single unlucky exchange was Sheffield. We do not yet know when this will go live.
It is worth
It’s easy to see that ADSL Max has got everyone rather excited at the moment. Forum posts on the subject are seemingly endless in number and the bt.com/broadband website seemed to slow a crawl at midnight as the nations most eager broadband users simultaneously clicked “Go” on the availability checker.
However, a note of caution. ADSL
PlusNet today announced that, following successful trials, it has reached agreement with Tiscali UK for Tiscali to supply wholesale broadband network services to PlusNet utilising its Local Loop Unbundled (LLU) infrastructure.
Speeds up to 8Mb will be available within Tiscali’s LLU service areas using ADSL and speeds of up to 24Mb will be possible in areas
Today the last exchange in Surrey was enabled Forest Green, this now provides the area with 100% enablement of exchanges.
More information can be found here on the Connected Surrey Partnership site.
Today BSkyB outlined plans to bring the total number of LLU exchanges to 750 by the end of 2006 and 1,200 by 2007. This is equivalent to about 70 percent of homes, their current rollout only reaches 20 percent of homes in the UK.
You can find a list of the existing Easynet enabled exchanges here.
Be have brought forward the enablement dates of a further four exchanges in the past 2 days. Chingford, Kidbrooke Gipsy Hill and Finchley are all now live for Be’s 24Mbps ADSL2+ product. This brings Be’s coverage to 86 exchanges in total, with a further 41 due to be enabled by the end of March.
The full
Be have today announced that they are conducting trials of the Annex M ADSL2+ standard on their network. Annex M allows for an increased upstream rate, and Be have stated they intend to increase theirs to 2.5Mbps.
Trials have been underway since late 2005, and these have seen upstream speeds of up to 1.9Mbps, which is
Andrew Davies, Minister for Economic Development and Transport, has today announced that BT have been awarded the contract to supply broadband to the remaining 35 unviable exchanges in Wales. Work will commence immediately, with the first RFS date due at the end of June. 32 RFS dates were released in total, which can be found
Today seems to of been a busy day for some of the LLU providers.
Wanadoo remove two exchanges from the unbundling rollout plan, these unlucky exchanges are Almondsbury and Waltham Cross. Seven exchanges have been pushed back from 30/04/06 to 31/07/06 these can be found here
Be Unlimited released another exchange today, Woodford This brings the total
3 exchanges have their enablement dates pushed back 2 weeks. Horsington, Tongue End and Winceby all see their enable dates moved from from 24/03/06 to 02/04/06.
However, in better news, 2 exchanges have had their dates moved forward. Hamstall Ridware, originally set as 28/06/06, and Rackenford, originally set as 21/06/06, are both being moved to 12/05/06.
With
Be Un Limited have quietly enabled Hornchurch, Hampstead, Leytonstone, Walthamstow, Cricklewood and Southall exchanges for the 24Mbps unbundled ADSL2+ service. This brings the total number of exchanges unbundled by Be to 76. A further 342 exchanges are scheduled to be unbundled by the end of September this year.
However, there was some bad news for people
BT have pushed forward the ADSL Max enablement dates of 22 exchanges. These exchanges will be immediately included in the current high speed trials which are taking place right now with participating ISP’s. All of the following exchanges were enabled for ADSL Max on the 15th February, unless otherwise stated:
Abinger, Airth, Appin, Ascot (Enabled 20/02/2006),
Be Unlimited have today announced that they will be rolling out their service to 156 exchanges by May 2006. Of this figure, 60 are already enabled in central London. Indeed, it is good to see that Be are progressing out of the capital with their rollout too.
A map depicting the 60 currently enabled exchanges and
I’ve added 148 Bulldog RFS to the LLU pages. See here for the full list. I’ll be providing a much needed update to the maps soon.
Incidentally, next week promises to be another interesting week for LLU. That said, the news will be nothing new to those who know where to look already!
I’ve updated the Bulldog data and added Be* and Wanadoo data to the site. The Be* and Wanadoo data is currently viewable only on the LLU pages. I’ll add that data to the individual exchange pages shortly (a major database change prohibits this at present).
More updates to follow soon.