BT Wholesale in special offer on shared LLU migration

[Bazza]

The BT website has details on a special offer for migration from an IPStream or DataStream based service on to a shared LLU line. The standard migration fee for a shared LLU line is £34.86+VAT, but from 1st July 2005, it will be reduced to £20+VAT. The offer will be available for 12 months, but the catch is that it is only available for bulk migrations.

A shared LLU line, is one where the service provider has the copper telephone line connected to their own hardware at the exchange, rather than a BT DSLAM as is standard. The line will still be connected to the BT telephone network at the exchange, which means the end-users telephone service will continue to function as it did prior to the migration. This is the system currently used by UK Online to provide its up to 8Mbps ADSL service.

This offer may help to stimulate providers to move faster into the LLU arena, but will not benefit all LLU providers. Bulldog are one provider who will miss out, since they use the fully unbundled line option, whereby Bulldog provide both the DSL and telephone services.