Broadband

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 LLU operators running their own equipment in them.

The capacity issue was highlighted rather suddenly in February of this year when Be announced that they had run out of capacity at the Poplar exchange. In fact, the capacity headache goes far beyond a sole provider on a single exchange.

Recently, BT Openreach have begun publishing a Capacity Briefing on their website that shows the true extent of engineering challenge they face. The spreadsheet, dated 16 May 2008, reveals that 113 exchanges have Blocked Frames (i.e. there is no room for additional frames where phone lines may terminate) and a further 8 are depleted of spare tie pairs (which are used to connect lines between frames). Some have estimated fix dates as early as this week and others as late as July 2009.

Flicking through the “RED” capacity warning list gives the best indicator of the pressure that LLU is placing on BT’s engineers. There are 688 exchanges on this list, each of which has very limited capacity remaining for new connections. This does not bode well for future LLU expansion in these areas.

Fortunately all of these capacity warnings have yet to translate into widespread problems and delays for end users, and this is a testament to the engineering work and resources that BT is ploughing into its exchanges. That said, at the current rate of growth something will inevitably have to give - either LLU growth will begin to slow or we’ll start to see a lot more orders being delayed due to insufficient capacity.

Tags: Be Unlimited, BT Openreach