Posted: 16th Nov, 2011 By: MarkJ
BTOpenreach, which manages access to BT's local UK telecoms infrastructure, has today announced the
commercial launch of its often controversial
Physical Infrastructure Access (PIA) product. PIA gives rival ISPs the ability to access BT's
underground cable ducts and
telegraph poles for the deployment of their own ultrafast fibre optic ( FTTP ) broadband networks.
BT claims to have gained the "
confidence to proceed with the commercial launch" of its new PIA products, which will officially go live before the end of November 2011, after receiving "
positive feedback" on its recent changes and price reductions (
here) from triallist. In particular BT claims to have "
made strong progress" with its largest and most significant trial customer -
Fujitsu UK.
Earlier this year Fujitsu, with support from Virgin Media , TalkTalk and Cisco, announced that it would use PIA to deploy a new
Open Access Wholesale Network (
here). The network would aim to reach
5 Million homes in rural areas by 2016 and act as an alternative to BT's national platform. At the time Fujitsu warned that BT's PIA solution was still too expensive and demanded that the service be offered on "
fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory" terms.
Since then BT, under some additional government pressure, has revised its offering. Fujitsu is now said to be the "
furthest-advanced participant in Openreach’s [PIA] trial" and last week
connected its first end-users via their ultrafast
1Gbps capable
Fibre-to-the-Premises ( FTTP ) based network in the
Wirral.
BT Openreach's CEO, Liv Garfield, said:
"We’ve pulled out all the stops to make sure our products fit the needs of our customers, so I have been delighted by the positive feedback we’ve had from Fujitsu UK and others. Pole and duct access will enable CPs to deliver superfast broadband speeds in areas outside the existing planned commercial footprint, so we felt it was important to launch the products as soon as possible."
Andy Stevenson, CEO Fujitsu Telecommunications Europe, added:
"Fujitsu UK have made strong progress to date using Openreach’s poles and ducts and so we welcome the imminent commercial launch of their products. I’m delighted to announce that the first of our triallists are now live on our trial network, and we’re proud to be the first Communications Provider in the UK to offer service through this route to market.
Whilst there are still some points of detail we’re working through ahead of commercial launch, we’ve been reassured by Openreach’s collaborative approach towards pricing and product development, which gives us the confidence to move forward."
The move represents a significant and promising step forward, although Virgin Media recently cautioned ISPreview.co.uk that "
there remains significant disparity between what BT is proposing and what industry knows the costs to carry out the work are". Virgin also noted that some of BT's PIA prices had remained unchanged or actually increased. Crucially many of the related areas were not covered in Ovum's recent study, which is what BT uses for some of its EU price comparison.
Fujitsu's solution also suffers from a
heavy dependence upon public funds, which is needed to help get its network started. Some earlier reports suggested that the project could need as much as
£500m from the government's Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) office in order to achieve its targets. It's difficult to see this happening, especially with BT competing for the same pot of cash, and if Fujitsu's project does proceed then a scaling back of their ambitions and or re-adjustment of the funding requirements might become necessary.
UPDATE 22nd November 2011BT's Physical Infrastructure Access (PIA) officially became available as a true commercial product yesterday (21st November). Further details can be found here:
http://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/home/products/ductandpolesharing/ductandpolesharing/ductandpolesharing.do