[The Register] UK - C&W to throw £85m at LLU

damien

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/20/candw_llu_bulldog/

Cable & Wireless is to plough £55m-£85m into local loop unbundling (LLU) over the next couple of years as it ramps up its investment in broadband. It is to unbundle up to 400 exchanges in the second half of 2005 as it targets around a third of BT's exchanges.

Last week's announcement follows C&W's recent acquisition of Bulldog Communications, one of the few companies in the UK currently installing its kit in BT exchanges to supply telco services direct to end users.

According Francesco Caio, chief executive, C&W is "uniquely positioned to take advantage of LLU in the UK given the reach of its national network, the second largest in the country. LLU enables Cable & Wireless to establish full ownership of its customers as their sole telecommunications provider reducing reliance on the incumbent. LLU allows us to establish a strong presence in the access network and to unlock the value of our fixed network. Over time this will translate to stronger margins."

Last week Bulldog began taking orders for a combined broadband and telephone service in central London based on its own LLU network. ®

flamegrill

I hear tell of Smart telecom doing the same here, putting their own kit in eircom exchanges in a move to unbundle the local loop. I believe between themselves and ESB (who they back haul around the country) they will have a full LLU dsl service available in about 12 months.

Paul

damien

Right now a telco that wants to go down the LLU route must be looking to commit corporate suicide. LLU pricing as agreed between Eircom and ComReg is madness. Something like a 35 step process, each step of which incurs an additional charge.

One of the real golden pieces of this is that Eircom have 5 working days to fix a broken LLU line. Also if the line get's cut and Eircom repair it, the other telco has to pay them a repair fee of over 100 euros, even though Eircom already got the 120 charge for switching it to LLU and are being payed the monthly LLU fee which is still over 16 euros.

The only reason I see that EsatBT did LLU is because they got 40% NDP funding. I doubt Smart is going to get that.

oscarBravo

damien.m wrote:

Right now a telco that wants to go down the LLU route must be looking to commit corporate suicide. LLU pricing as agreed between Eircom and ComReg is madness. Something like a 35 step process, each step of which incurs an additional charge.

...not to mention the fact that the local loop in question is, in a large number of cases, a piece of crap.

eircomtribunal

oscarBravo wrote:

...not to mention the fact that the local loop in question is, in a large number of cases, a piece of crap.

With LLU there is a Comreg regulation in existence that Eircom has to remove carrier systems (pair gain devices etc.) on request of the unbundler. I was told by Comreg that in some cases of unbundling this had already been done.
Could prove to cause headaches for Eircom, unless there is a clause in it saying "provided it is feasable")

The consultation on Comreg's idiotic LLU pricing proposal is still open, till 28th Sept. But what can one say; they have agreed to protect Eircom by giving them the second highest LLU price in Europe and cement it for years.

Denmark , that had no competition from cable, achieved its first place in the EU bb list by setting a low LLU price. The rapidly growing market share of competitors to the incumbent Telco was (successfully) fought back by the incumbent with low consumer pricing. We should and could be at exactly the ranking of Denmark with 12 bb subscribers per 100 inhabitants, instead we are just above no-hopers Greece (no English language, not much on the net for them, a lot of sun).
Dermot and Doherty are muppets.
Comreg is in contempt of the DCMNR March 2004 policy directive.

P.