Posted: 17th Nov, 2011 By: MarkJ
BTOpenreach, which is responsible for managing access to BT's local UK telecoms infrastructure, has praised ISPs and phone providers for all their help after it announced that the last few remaining 2nd generation
Wholesale Line Rental (
WLR2) telephone lines had now finally been migrated across to its
WLR3 platform. The old WLR2 service is thus formally closed.
Wholesale Line Rental is important because it allows rival providers to
rent access lines on wholesale terms from BT, and resell the lines to customers, providing a
single bill that covers both your phone line rental and calls. Most fixed line phones and related services rely upon it.
The old WLR2 product was essentially a
relic of the pre-Openreach era. The communications regulator, Ofcom UK, eventually decided that it gave BT an unfair advantage / amount of control (i.e. no "
Equivalence of Input") and called for a new a framework that would allow all Communication Providers (CPs) to compete on equal terms. Openreach was born and so too was the improved WLR3 product. It's taken several years but the migration is now finally complete.
A BTOpenreach Statement said:
The migration has been a huge achievement for all concerned and involved establishing over 400 CPs and migrating over 6 Million WLR2 lines and digital channels to WLR3.
The migration was a real example of how the UK Telecommunications market can work together. We know we couldn’t have done it without the help of our Customers, the TPIs, the OTA and Ofcom and want to say a really big thank you to you all for your commitment to the programme and all your hard work.
Ordinary consumers probably won't even need to bat an eyelid at this. After all, for most people, it will have been a fairly seamless change, one where the ultimate burden has rested with internet and phone providers. Never the less WLR is something that many of us continue to use and the passing of WLR2 is a subtle but still important milestone for the telecoms industry.