BT unbundles its millionth line

 

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By Reuters

Posted on 8 Nov 2006 at 17:04

BT says it has now unbundled one million of its telephone lines for competitors to offer cheaper service. It describes this as a major milestone, reflecting the highly competitive state of UK broadband market.

The former UK telecoms monopoly said its Openreach division, set up in January under a deal with regulator Ofcom intended to open up its network to rivals, was processing almost 30,000 unbundling requests each week.

Before BT's settlement with Ofcom, only around 15,000 lines had been unbundled over the past four years.

The unbundling process involves BT's rivals installing their own equipment in BT's exchanges, which allows them to gain control of the cables that connect the exchanges to homes and business and offer broadband services at a cheaper cost to consumers.

BT said more than 1,000 local exchanges across the UK had unbundled lines, with more than 20 operators providing services.

With unbundling, BT's rivals do not need to buy a wholesale broadband product from BT to provide their services, hitting revenues at its wholesale arm and increasing competition for its retail arm.

The group, however, still gets revenues from the unbundling process as rivals have to pay Openreach a fixed sum of money each month for every line they use.

'This is a fantastic achievement for the whole of industry and demonstrates that the UK has one of the most competitive broadband markets in the world,' said Openreach CEO Steve Robertson. 'This progress has been underpinned by price reductions and the introduction of new product and systems capability to make it simpler for operators to migrate their end customers onto unbundled services. Openreach is committed to making sure that this positive trend continues.'