|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
 |
 |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ADSL Factsheet – November 2002 | |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
 |
 |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
|
|
 |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
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 – October 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.
There are currently only two companies offering wholesale ADSL products to service providers. Kingston Communications offers ADSL services from exchanges in the Hull area and BT offers services from enabled exchanges in the rest of the UK. 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 late October): BT: ~447,000 Kingston: ~10,000
3. Developments
Exchange trigger reached – what next: BT has produced guidance for ISPs on its procedure to enable an exchange for ADSL, once the exchange trigger level has been achieved. ISPs are given 42 days to convert registrations of interest into orders. Once 75% of registrations have been confirmed as orders BT will put the exchange into its build programme. TotalCare trial: BT has begun the second phase of its trial of a chargeable enhanced maintenance option for end users, offering extended working hours and committed fault response timescales. TotalCare provides customers with a 4-hour response to reported end user faults and offers 24-hour coverage, 7 days a week. The care option is available on the BT IPStream products and on BT DataStream Home and Office. BT has also announced changes to the Standard Service option.BT Datastream Home & Office Enhancements: BT has enhanced these packages to allow ISPs increased ability to control overbooking ratios across their network by allowing them to regulate the maximum number of end users per virtual path (VP). A range of smaller VP’s and two additional VP ATM service classes have also been introduced. The cost of the service has also been amended with the annual rental charge reduced from £111 to £101 (ex VAT).
SDSL trial: BT has started the trial of a range of symmetric digital subscriber line (SDSL) variants of its IPStream and DataStream products, aimed at providing end users with faster upstream data rates. The six month trial is initially based around 20 exchanges in the Greater London area but will be rolled out to a further 30 exchanges, including some in Manchester and Yorkshire, during the trial period. Community Broadband trial: BT is to trial a new ‘community’ broadband concept at sites in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The trial makes use of smaller exchange equipment (known as mini DSLAMs) and the existing copper links between smaller exchanges and BT’s backbone network to offer ADSL services to as few as 16 subscribers.
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 – ProductsBT 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. Closed cases: (vii) Alleged margin squeeze on the business products (viii) Wholesale DSL Terms and Conditions & Service Level Agreements (x) Special offer investigation (xi) Alleged passing of confidential information to BT Openworld
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
 |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
