By silicon.com, 27 April 2004 16:20
Local loop unbundling. LLU. Say it any way you want but we haven't heard it talked about in a while.
Today Wanadoo - as in Wanadoo UK, an arm of France Telecom's ISP business - launched a fairly broad broadband broadside against BT and the state of high-speed, always-on access in this country.
That ISP has not only changed its name from Freeserve but lamented the failure that has been LLU in the UK. While still relying on BT's wholesale offerings, it has pre-announced a range of services on their way this year, including voice-over-IP telephone calls and video-on-demand.
From now on, it will also sell an ADSL product as a loss leader. How 1999 does that sound?
In many ways, Wanadoo's timing couldn't have been better - or worse. This morning we wrote that BT is scrapping trigger levels at certain exchanges. It will provide 'near-universal' broadband access by the middle of next year because it's the right thing to do, it said.
Where does this leave all those rural campaigners - at a loss? Cracking open the bubbly, cheering "victory!"? We're not sure but first thing this morning it was assumed that the announcement was timed to douse talk that new super-regulator Ofcom is finally looking at breaking up the telco.
It was also a response, in a way, to Telewest and NTL announcing more broadband per monthly subscription (for example, a 1Mbps Telewest connection is going up to 1.5Mbps).
No doubt Wanadoo's move isn't only about BT. Taking on a certain ISP 'from the continent' - namely Tiscali, with its lower-speed but highly popular 150Kbps service - is part of the play.
Just how much each of these providers has reacted to each other rather than having had their assaults planned for weeks or months we can't say. But as a busy Tuesday draws to a close, it's good to see competition and jostling for position step up a gear in the UK broadband market.
Comments
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1. Lindsey Annison
Ah yes, "near universal broadband" means 1/2Mbps shared with 50 other people for 25 nicker a month. Even BT admit ADSL is an interim technology, but that doesn't stop announcements like this week conning the nation into believing broadband is almost here for 97% of the nation.
When we are all bored with that ADSL trip, as many are now because it won't DO what broadband is supposed to with broadband content, then what are the marketers going to call it? SuperFatBand? ObeseBand?
In 1984, broadband was 2Mbps+ and the fact we aren't close to that at mass market level, though you'd never believe it from the hype this week, is worrying.
In Milan etc they have FastWeb at 20+ euros a month chucking every imaginable type of content, data and voice services you could want at you, PLUS the bandwidth is there to let you create your own content. (Wowee, there's a novel idea, people as content producers, but hang on one moment, isn't that how telephones work??!)
Are the community/ campaigners breaking open the bubbly? Nope, I can assure you we aren't. In the week when all EU funds are now going to be going to other countries, we can only wonder how we are going to get real broadband into this country, and when.
2. anonymous
A sobering thought perhaps that Wanadoo are suspected of hosting a notorious hacking source site.
That Wanadoo never ever reply to abuse, hacking attempts using trojans, etc. Whereas most other West European & Scandinavian ISP's reply courteously. As for Tiscali, look more closely at the customer dissatisfacion logs at www.adslguide.org. I also recall as an ex-LineOne user that over 50 of my e-mails were destroyed, lost by Tiscali when they bought LineOne. When many of us L1 users declined to move to Tiscali, the immediate result was of course torrents of spam being sent to our L1 inboxes. Now I wonder how that happened? No prizes for working it out. Also regarding Tiscali, a quick glance at the Broadband Forums at ADSLGuide & elsewhere. Did you actually do any research on the track records of either Wanadoo or Tiscali???? Bags of hype.......but & a big but!!!!!
Regards, A