The Telecommunications adjudicator (OTA), Peter Black, has released his latest monthly (March'07) report on the status of UK local loop unbundling (
LLU) -
HERE. Some 2,000,000 lines are about to be unhooked from BT, adding a hefty 300,000 since February'07.
The biggest news this week, outside of the strongest growth since we first began tracking
LLU progress, is that the OTA may soon switch to a new OTA2 scheme. Precisely what form this will take is not yet known. Meanwhile we've continued to keep track of unbundling progress:
Jan'06 = 250,000
Feb'06 = 300,000 (+50k)
Mar'06 = 360,000 (+60k)
Apr'06 = 420,000 (+60k)
May'06 = 471,000 (+51k)
Jun'06 = 580,000 (+109k)
Jul'06 = 673,000 (+93k)
Aug'06 = 735,000 (+62k)
Sep'06 = 850,000 (+115k)
Oct'06 = 1,000,000 Estimated (+150k)
Nov'06 = 1,100,000 (+100k)
Dec'06 = 1,300,000 (+200k)
Jan'07 = 1,500,000 (+200k)
Feb'07 = 1,700,000 (+200k)
Mar'07 = 2,000,000 (+300k)
There's not a terrible amount of reason for us to keep monitoring this anymore since the major hurdles have largely been passed. Unbundled lines are likely to continue on a steady track, although issues with specific areas of migration remain problematic.
Still, this will be the last time we write a full monthly update. Future news will just contain the headline figure and link.