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The British Telecoms regulator set final charges for shared access to local loops in the United Kingdom and set an annual rent of STG53 plus a one-off connection charge of STG117 per shared loop. These new rates are lower than the charges proposed by Oftel in June of 2000.
A local loop is the copper wired connection from a telephone company's central location to homes and businesses. Generally speaking, in Europe the local loops have been controlled by the older telephone companies that established telephone services in their home nations, Eircom and British Telecom being two examples. Unbundling of the local loop (LLU) will theoretically drive competition in the market and prices down for consumers.
On Thursday, Oftel also decreed that BT may not charge operators separately for clearing a site in preparation for co-location build in its exchanges, but must recover these costs through rent charged for co-location space.
The UK agency said that it had found that while in general BT's charges for co-location are cost-oriented, the telecommunications company's charges for some services, for example the external tie cable rental charge, are too high. Oftel is proposing changes to BT's pricing as a result.
"These announcements provide further clarification for operators planning to offer services over unbundled local loops," said David Edmonds, director general of telecommunications.
He added, "Final prices for shared access to local loops are lower than those originally proposed, following analysis of additional information received by Oftel during the consultation period." Edmonds also said the rental charge is now below the EU average.
Of course in Ireland, local loop unbundling has been a slow and tedious process with the ODTR as well as new entrants to the telecoms market accusing Eircom of dragging its feet.
The conflict lies primarily in the dispute the two organisations have over prices to other telecoms for access to Eircom's local loop. Under the terms of a directive issued by the ODTR earlier this year, monthly line rental was to be fixed at EUR13.53. Eircom had proposed a monthly rental of EUR32.50.
Very little progress has been made between Eircom and the ODTR since this directive was issued in May, and other subsequent disputes have erupted between the two organisations, most notably a dispute regarding Eircom's proposed charge for its wholesale DSL product.
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