Posted: 15th Jun, 2006 By: MarkJ
BT Openreach has announced that unbundled UK lines (
LLU) have finally passed the half million mark; albeit considerably behind earlier estimates of 2 to 3 million by the end of 2006 (i.e. we should be at 1m by now):
This significant increase in the number of unbundled lines demonstrates that the LLU market is quickly gathering pace. On average, Openreach is currently fulfilling more than 20,000 LLU orders per week. With nearly twenty operators providing unbundled services from almost 1,000 local exchanges across the UK today, LLU is firmly established as a critical component of the highly competitive broadband market. The tremendous progress in LLU is the direct result of ongoing collaboration between Openreach, industry and the Office of the Telecommunications Adjudicator.
This latest achievement follows the recent introduction of reduced pricing for full and shared LLU products by Openreach, making it more cost effective for communications providers to move their end customers onto unbundled services.
From 1st July, prices for operators wanting to migrate end customers in bulk from BT Wholesales broadband products to Openreachs shared LLU product will be £25.39 (ex VAT) 27 per cent less than the price for migrating a single user. Furthermore, with the launch of a new mass migration product for full LLU in late July, the price for migrating existing Wholesale Line Rental end users to full LLU on an aggregated basis will be £27.54 (ex VAT) 21 per cent less than the price for migrating a single user.Hopefully the recent price reduction will boost uptake, if perhaps not by so much as we would hope.