I am pleased to announce that our first Performance Monitoring report is ready (finally!).
The report is available in PDF format using the link below. Apologies for the relatively large file size - many of the images are at a higher resolution, so you can zoom in for a better look. A one page “executive summary”
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 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
Be Unlimited have this morning announced plans to expand their network by nearly 400 exchanges within the next four months. This represents a 50% increase in their exchange footprint and will give them the second largest LLU network in the UK. Their 1245 unbundled exchanges will be trumped only by TalkTalk’s 1645. Be’s network of
On Thursday afternoon, Be (owned by O2) announced to their members that they could no longer accept new orders for customers on the Poplar exchange. This may seem rather unimportant at first glance, but the reason behind it is actually quite interesting.
According to Brett Coles, Head of Member Services at Be, the root issue is
Mobile operator O2 yesterday caught up with the rest of the mobile crowd and launched their broadband offerings. Built on the back of Be’s network of 818 ADSL2+ enabled exchanges, covering nearly 14m premises, O2 hope to differentiate themselves from the crowd by not going down the “free broadband” route and instead competing on features.
O2
As you may have already noticed, the website has undergone a makeover. The old look had been there for four years now, so we decided to have a bit of a change. We have tried to keep a similar feel to the site, and hope that both new and existing users find the updated layout
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
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
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
A much needed update of the Availability Checker has finally been completed. This adds support for ADSL Max, Be, Wanadoo, Zen, Edge and also improved data for Now wireless services. There are also a few other additions that will be completed over the coming weeks.
The updated checker builds directly on top of a new Availability
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
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
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
As some of you have noticed already, I have added data pertaining to BT’s upcoming ADSL Max product, which offers up to 8Mbps downstream over your existing ADSL hardware. I’m currently listing 53 enabled exchange, 5247 with a RFS date and 151 with no planned roll-out date yet. Please keep in mind that the RFS
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