Topic: BT Wholesale

BT Wholesale is to distribute a software suite that could improve broadband speeds through the use of multiple lines.

Although bonding lines through Multi-link Point to Point Protocol (MLPPP) is nothing new and has been offered by some ISPs for a number of years, BT has been very shy about the process and generally not supported it on it's connections.

But it is now going to offer The Sharedband Aggregation Suite which was partially created by ex-BT Labs employees who have formed a company named Shareband. The suite will allow two or more standard broadband lines to be added together to deliver up to four times the speed for uploads and downloads (sound familiar?), but this time supported by BT.

BT Wholesale have announced that from July until September they will offer free migration between ISP's

Users must be connected with either IPstream or Datastream and move to a IPstream Max, IPstream Max Premium, Datastream Max or Datastream Max Premium connection, so it looks like bad news for those on an unbundled (LLU) service.

It's not obvious what BT will gain from this promotion, and as this is for ISP's only it's unsure whether all providers will pass on the savings to end users.

BT Wholesale have confirmed that the prices they charge ISPs for the use of their BT centrals will be reduced from May 1st.

The complete list of pricing bands and changes is pretty complicated, but ThinkBroadband has the complete list for both IPStream and CBC (Capacity Based Charging) connection types.

What this will mean for residential customers is uncertain, but as the UK broadband market is already one of the most competitive it would be wise not to expect any substantial reductions.

Way back in 2002 BT had an ambitious plan to provide 5 million homes with broadband before the end of 2006.

At the time it looked pretty unlikely that it would happen, especially the rate at which BT were enabling exchanges in those days, back then only 66% of users had the chance of broadband, now this a whopping 99.8 percent.

BT's original 5 million target has now been doubled, and only a few days into 2007! Of the 10 million enabled connections BT, though their Wholesale division, have 8.7 million of those connections, the rest are provided via LLU/BT Openreach. In actual market share BTRetail has 24 percent, or 3 million customers.

Over at ADSLGuide they have noticed that the BT availability checker has some new information added to it.

Now the checker will tell if an ADSL cease is on the line, this is placed on the line when ceasing an ADSL connection. This will be helpful for ADSL users who cannot migrate to another ISP and are waiting for the line to clear before they are able to order a new ADSL connection.

The checker is on the BTWholesale site, here, but as most ISP checkers are linked to the same data then this should be reflected in those also.

ADSLGuide has spotted a snippet in the Belfast Telegraph (where else would you look!) which is hinting that BT are planning to cut it's wholesale prices with details to be announced next week.

Whether this will be actual cost reduction in the price ISP's pay for IPStream and Datastream connections we will have to see.

BT have announced it's latest essential network upgrade which it will be between the 24th of October 2006 to the 10th of November 2006.

The engineering work will be conducted between the hours of 00:01 – 06:00 each night and customers on scheduled individual DSLAM’s should expect to experience a downtime period of approximately 30 minutes. The maintenance work will only effect the DSLAM’s scheduled for maintenance, and will affect all users connected to them no matter which ISP the user is with.

ADSLGuide has released BT's planned engineering work which may result in users losing connectivity for a time.

The work will take place on around 30 DSLAM's per night and plans to have everything completed by October 2006.
The planned schedule is broken down by region below.

• Central Midlands 4th September and 5th September
• South Midlands 6th September
• West Midlands 7th September
• East Midlands 8th to 13th September
• North Scotland 14th September
• West Scotland 15th September to 18th September
• East Scotland 19th September
• Wales (North) 20th September
• Northern Ireland 21st September
• East Anglia 22nd September to 25th September
• South Downs 26th September
• Southampton 27th September
• Severn Side 28th September
• South Wales 29th September
• North London 2nd October
• South London 3rd October
• Central London 4th October
• North Downs 5th October
• Thamesway 6th October
• Mid Yorkshire 9th October
• South Lancashire 10th October
• Lancashire 11th October
• Liverpool 12th October
• Manchester 12th October
• North East 13th October
• Cornwall 13th October

Upgrades will take place between midnight and 6am and expected downtime for users is expected be be in the region of half an hour. BT are recommending that users turn off equipment for a minute or so after an outage.

Over at ADSLGuide they have published an article detailing BT's reduction of regrade fees. One interesting point is that a regrade from an existing IPStream product of 1Mbps to 2Mbps to the new MAX products will be free of charges as already hinted at by BT.

A short summary follows (prices are excluding VAT):

• Regrades to BT IPStream Max Premium are free apart from users on a 0.25Mbps, 0.5Mbps or Max service where it will cost £5.
• Regrades to BT IPStream Max are free apart from users on a 0.25Mbps, 0.5Mbps or Max Premium service where it will cost £5.
• Regrades to IPStream Office 500/1000/2000 from other IPStream products will be charged at £5.
• Regrades to IPStream Home 250/500/1000/2000 from other IPStream products will be charged at £5.

The full BT IPStream regrade pricing structure can be found on the BT retail site.

As expected BT Max products are to go live with a nationwide rollout, starting from 31st March.

The products, which have been undergoing trials on 76 exchanges, will be expanded to cover around 5300 exchanges which will cover 99.6% of all UK homes and businesses. They will also be renamed BT ADSL Max and BT ADSL Max Premium, with the Premium product having an upstream of up to 832Kbps compared to 448Kbps of the standard product.

Although stated as an 8Mbps connection the actual speed will be rate adaptive on both the up and downstream, so lines will run at the fastest rate available, rather than a set figure as previously applied by BT wholesale.
BT estimates that 78% of lines should support broadband at line rates of 4Mbps and above, with 6Mbps and above available to more than 42%, only those living close their local telephone exchange will achieve line rates of up to the maximum 8Mbps.