Broadband

The latest Broadband Working Group slides from BT’s Consult21 seem to demonstrate growing unease amongst the ISPs over BT Wholesale’s 21CN plans.

In the minutes of the 26th September meeting representatives of Sky, Tiscali, Orange and even BT Retail all voiced their dissatisfaction over proposals to switch from a two step migration process (20CN IPStream to 21CN IPStream, then to 21CN WBC/WBMC) to a one step process (20CN IPStream direct to 21CN WBC/WBMC). BT Wholesale cited delays and issues with the trials in the West Midlands as the reasons behind the proposed move. The ISPs responded responded bluntly to the change with:

ISPs have also taken issue with the massive difference in pricing between Band 1 and Band 2 exchanges (These pricing differences are covered extensively on our 21CN Broadband page). An Orange representative suggested that they “may not use the product” due to the “Band 2 prices [being] too high compared to LLU”. Sky, a major LLU operator, felt that “the current WBC Roll-out plan shows no benefit in 2008 or early 2009 for many LLU companies”.

Broadband Line Access - the process of running an ADSL line without a phone line (commonly called Naked DSL) - was the final issue of contention between BT Wholesale and the ISPs. Consultation on this matter had previously been closed in July with BT Openreach concluding that “there is insufficient rationale to justify pursuing the BLA initiative at this time”. However, the ISPs are unsatisfied with this response and seem eager to see a product developed. It now seems that a 21CN variant is under consideration by BT.

A few other developments were also to be found within the latest slides (such as “Shared” and “Dedicated” variants of the WBMC service), and these will be added to the 21CN pages shortly.

Tags: BT Retail, BT Wholesale, IPStream, Orange, Sky, Tiscali