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| ADSL Factsheet – January 2003 | |
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This fact sheet provides a history of the rollout of Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) products and gives an update on current progress and upcoming developments. ContentsProgress update – an update of the major advances over the past month and upcoming developments. Annex A – History of ADSL Annex B – Products Annex C – Technology Annex D – Investigations Progress update – December 2002
This update focuses on progress made in the last month and is not intended as a complete overview of ADSL roll-out. References to operators (OLOs) are to companies, other than BT or Kingston, which operate telecommunications systems. Service Providers (SPs) are companies that provide telecommunications services to third parties, e.g. consumers. The Annexes attached to this fact sheet give further information on DSL and are arranged according to subject area.
Following Oftel's Direction of 21 June 2002 (click for details), which required BT to provide interconnection to its broadband DSL network, and recent changes to BT's interconnection products, other operators now have the option of offering competing wholesale products to those offered by BT. Oftel is ensuring that the prices for the interconnection products required by other operators to compete with BT are set at a level that encourages competition between different providers of broadband services.
1. Roll-out: BT:
Although 66% of households may be in areas served by ADSL-enabled exchanges, not all households in these areas will be close enough to the exchanges to receive ADSL service. BT has estimated that, on average, 95% of households in an exchange area are close enough to receive ADSL, reducing the total ADSL coverage to 63%. Kingston: All of Kingston’s exchanges in the Hull area are now enabled to deliver ADSL.
2. Take up (as at mid January):
BT: ~600,000 Kingston: ~10,000
3. Developments
Broadband Registration Scheme: BT has decided to remove the 42-day confirmation process from its registration scheme. Once trigger levels are met and confirmed by BT, work will begin to upgrade the exchange.
Reduced Trigger levels: BT has lowered the threshold levels of customer interest required before an exchange is upgraded for broadband. The maximum demand trigger level will now be 550 registrations and triggers have been lowered by as much as 450 user registrations.
Exchanges in build stage: There are now at least 97 exchanges in build stage. This includes exchanges that have been moved to build stage as a result of the changes to the registration scheme.
On-line availability checker update: BT’s online availability checker (http://www.bt.com/broadband) has been updated to inform customers where an incompatible product is present on the line. Customers who have ISDN or Home Highway services are made aware that they will have to cease the service before proceeding with ADSL.
Launch of Broadband Standard Care: BT Wholesale has amended its Standard Care package for some of its services. The service will be launched on 3 February and offers a guaranteed clear of an End User Access fault within 40 clock hours of it being reported to them. This should enable Service Providers to offer 48-hour fault clearance to end users.
Annex A – HistoryBT took a commercial decision to roll out ADSL products. Oftel has been involved in monitoring rollout to ensure that BT complies with its legal obligations under the Competition Act 1998 and the terms of its Licence. BT must not, for example, unduly prefer its own SP business.
Kingston took a similar decision at the start of October to roll out ADSL products. All of Kingston’s exchanges in the Hull area are enabled to deliver ADSL and Oftel will ensure that Kingston complies with its legal obligations under the Competition Act 1998 and the terms of its Licence when offering ADSL products.
Annex B – Products BT Wholesale Products
Kingston Wholesale Products
There are currently over 280 customers taking these products from BT and Kingston. These include local authorities and large firms who are using the products as part of their internal networks as well as service providers and other operators who are using the products to offer services to residential and business customers. There are approximately 40 service providers offering services to residential customers and 70 offering services to business customers.
Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) technology transforms a normal telephone line into a high-speed digital line that enables access to telephony services and the Internet at the same time. ADSL provides always-on, always-available access to the Internet at speeds that are ten to 40 times faster than a standard 56k modem. ADSL service is specific to an individual line therefore if an end user moves address, they will need to take a new ADSL service – it cannot be transferred. ADSL is normally only available to those living within 3.5km of an ADSL-enabled local exchange, but this can be extended to 5.5km for rate adaptive variants of the products. Rate-adaption is achieved through relaxing the line qualification limits, enabling the upstream path (away from the End User) to rate adapt to between 64kbit/s and 250kbit/s depending on distance from the exchange and traffic levels. The downstream speed (into the End User) remains the same at up to 500kbit/s, providing continued high speed Internet downloads. G.DMT services are ‘wires-only’ variants of wholesale DSL products. BT will continue to provide the network elements, ie the wires, with the service provider supplying the end-user equipment, such as the modem. This is one step towards an ‘off-the-shelf’ modem/CPE product. Self-install products are the step beyond G.DMT. They will enable end-users to purchase CPE ‘off-the-shelf’ and install it themselves, eliminating the need for engineer installations.
Annex D – InvestigationsBT’s ADSL roll-out was a commercial decision. However, since BT announced its roll-out plans, Oftel has been involved in monitoring roll-out to ensure that BT complies with its legal obligations under its Licence and the Competition Act 1998. This monitoring process involves having weekly working level meetings and monthly high-level meetings with BT. Kingston has also introduced retail and wholesale ADSL products.
Oftel has also conducted a number of investigations into allegations of anti-competitive behaviour. Some investigations were the result of industry complaints, others have been initiated by Oftel itself. More detailed descriptions of most of these cases can be found in Oftel’s Competition Bulletin, which is published on a quarterly basis. Click on the case title to view the respective Competition Bulletin entry. (Please note, not all cases will have been published in the Bulletin yet).
Current cases:
(1) Freeserve’s broadband strategy complaint: Freeserve has alleged that BT is abusing the dominant position that it holds in the provision of local and national retail residential voice telephony by leveraging this power into the more competitive residential broadband market. In particular, Freeserve has raised concerns about BT Retail's use of the residential 'blue bill' and its '150' customer service line as a marketing and sales channel and to offer joint telephony and broadband Internet billing to consumers. Oftel is currently investigating the complaint. Contact: Martin Hill (020 7634 8829) (2) BT/BskyB Broadband Promotion: BT has entered into an agreement with BSkyB whereby Sky customers who order BT Broadband on-line via Sky.com will save £80 on equipment they would otherwise have had to buy from BT, and receive £20 credit on their Sky digital bill. ntl claims that this is a breach of condition 57 of BT’s licence in that it involves undue discrimination against BT customers who are not Sky customers, favours a BT business to a material extent, and puts competitors at a disadvantage. Oftel is currently investigating the complaint. Contact: Angela Pickett ( 020 7634 8995) Closed cases: (vi) Alleged margin squeeze on the business products (vii) Wholesale DSL Terms and Conditions & Service Level Agreements (ix) Special offer investigation (x) Alleged passing of confidential information to BT Openworld
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