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About Wholesale Line Rental (WLR) group

Oftel's 2001-2 review of the fixed telephony market concluded that BT has market power in the provision of both calls and access, and that one reason for this is BT's ability to provide a bundled calls and access service. This provides BT with a significant competitive advantage over other communications providers.

In August 2002, Oftel modified BT's licence to require it to provide a new WLR product to other communications providers on cost-based and non-discriminatory terms. This will allow alternative suppliers to rent access lines on wholesale terms form BT, and resell the access lines to end-users. This enables the alternative supplier to provide a single bill that covers both line rental and telephone calls. Oftel's aim was that this should stimulate competition in the fixed telephony market.

BT introduced a basic WLR product (WLR1) at the beginning of September 2002. The functionality of the product is similar to that of the Calls and Access product. WLR1 required further development for it to be a "fit-for-purpose" product in the mass market and operate efficiently at large volumes and seamlessly with other product such as carrier pre-selection (CPS).

Oftel published a consultation document on 14 November 2002 entitled Wholesale Line Rental, a consultation document issued by the Director General of Telecommunications. This set out detailed proposals for the next generation of the product, i.e. WLR2. In the light of comments received to this consultation document, Oftel published a statement on 11 March 2003, entitled Wholesale Line Rental: Oftel's Conclusions. (For documents see below.)

On 28 November 2003, Oftel published a notification on the 'Review of fixed narrowband, wholesale exchange line, call origination, conveyance and transit markets'. In this notification, requirements on BT to provide WLR in response to the findings of Significant Market Power (SMP) were set out for:

• wholesale residential analogue exchange line services
• wholesale business analogue exchange line services
• wholesale business ISDN2 exchange line services
• wholesale business ISDN30 exchange line services

Specifically Annex E detailed the functional specification for wholesale ISDN line rental.

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