Re-prioritising BT’s remaining Undertakings commitments on information systems separation

  • Start: 29 May 2009
  • Status: Closed
  • End: 10 July 2009

1.1 In this document we are proposing changes to certain obligations that British Telecommunications plc (“BT”) has relating to the separation of its information systems between Openreach and other parts of BT. Openreach is the BT division responsible for the majority of wholesale products sold to BT and external communications providers. These changes matter because they affect how independently Openreach operates. These proposals also affect how BT provides certain services to other communications providers (“CPs”), and ultimately how effective competition is in delivering benefits to residential and business customers.

1.2 Our proposals relate to a variation to a set of commitments that BT offered in 2005 (“the Undertakings”)(-1-) to address competition concerns that we had identified in certain fixed telecommunications markets(-2-). Much has already been achieved since then with the support of the Undertakings, as set out in more detail in our latest review of the implementation of the Telecoms Strategic Review (“TSR”), which we have also published today(-3-).

Specifically:

  • BT has delivered over 80 per cent of its Undertakings obligations, and the level of service that it provides to its competitors (in accordance with the Undertakings) has improved;
  • Consumers have benefited from greater availability and choice of services - including broadband, bundled voice telephony and broadband services, ‘triple-play’ services(-4-), and business connectivity services based on Ethernet(-5-); and
  • Broadband competition is very strong. There are now nearly six million broadband lines based on ‘local loop unbundling’. BT’s retail share of broadband is now one of the lowest of the incumbent operators’ market shares in the OECD.

1.3 But some key Undertakings milestones have yet to be achieved. This consultation relates largely to those remaining milestones that have a dependency on BT’s information systems separation programme and, to a much lesser extent, on the delay and revision in BT’s deployment plans of a next generation core network (“NGN”). One of the key aims of the Undertakings was that BT’s division responsible for the wholesale products primarily provided over BT’s access and backhaul networks - Openreach - should operate independently from the rest of BT (“RoBT”). According to the Undertakings it should further operate in a way that enables all of its customers to be provided with an equivalent level of service. BT is obliged to ensure that the information systems used by Openreach are separated such that other BT businesses cannot access information concerning the provision of services by Openreach to competing providers.

1.4 There are different levels to ‘systems separation’, but ultimately the current (and original) target is for Openreach’s data, applications and hardware to be separated from RoBT by June 2010. Achieving this separation obligation is easier in the case where new systems are being deployed and hence in meeting new supply of products supported by new systems. It is for this reason that Openreach’s key transaction system has been designed with separation in mind from the start. However, a key activity BT needs to undertake to satisfy its separation obligations is to ensure that information relating to its legacy retail installed customer base is migrated to systems that are separate from those used by Openreach. The reprioritisation of BT’s remaining obligations on which we are consulting primarily concerns a delay in the migration of BT’s legacy retail customer records to systems that are separate from Openreach. It also concerns a delay in the physical separation of Openreach’s systems from RoBT.


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Responses

Responder name Type
bt.pdf (PDF File, 20.3 KB) Organisation
ccwu.pdf (PDF File, 29.7 KB) Organisation
cw.pdf (PDF File, 53.2 KB) Organisation
fcs.pdf (PDF File, 88.4 KB) Organisation
sse.pdf (PDF File, 431.9 KB) Organisation
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