BT falls behind targets for unbundling the local loop

By Steve Malone

Posted on 8 Feb 2005 at 13:30

BT is falling behind its targets to unbundle the local loop. The Telecommunications Adjudicator has found that delivery of working systems 'continues to lag', with only 50-60 per cent of LLU projects being delivered on time to rivals compared with the target of 75 per cent.

The local loop is the copper circuit between the customer and the telco's local switch. It is expected that unbundling the local loop and making it available to rival operators will boost competition in the areas of voice telephony, broadband multimedia and high-speed Internet services and provide a spur to the growth of e-commerce and e-business.

BT blames legacy systems and the manual interventions necessary to complete the work for the delays. The telco says it has expanded the staff dedicated to local loop unbundling to help clear some of the bottlenecks being experienced by the LLUO (LLU Operators).

On the positive side, the Adjudicator says that by the end of January 31,000 lines had been unbundled, up significantly from the 12,000 or so in May last year but well behind the target of 50,000 set for February 2005. BT and the LLUOs have agreed a target of 2.5 million unbundled lines by the end of 2006.

The adjudicator said that he expects LLU to step up a gear in the spring when new automation and processes start to have an effect.

Last week, BT offered to spin off the LLU programme into a new division headed by BT's CEO Ben Verywaayen and with board members agreed by Ofcom in order to head off accusations that the telco was dragging its feet.