Campaign for Unmetered Telecommunications
 
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Our next OFTEL submission (28 September 1999)

In late July OFTEL issued a second consultation paper, Access to Bandwidth: Proposals for Action, on providing broadband access to all coupled with local loop unbundling.

We wrote an informal commentary (which also explains the technical terms used here): at the time we thought what OFTEL was proposing was as good as could be expected and required no formal response from us, but a closer look has exposed some flaws and prompted us to make a formal response.

Our main concern is that the timescales OFTEL has proposed are too drawn out. Once the responses to the second consultation paper are acted on and a determination made by OFTEL eleven months will have passed since OFTEL issued its first consultation paper; if there are no changes to timescales there could be up to a further nineteen months before there can be any competition to BT in broadband access over the copper local loop.

We also note that the second consultation paper mentions ADSL to the almost complete exclusion of other flavours of xDSL - and fibre to the local loop - which naturally progress from ADSL and cannot be ignored. We are also concerned, like others, at BT's high trial wholesale prices for ADSL.

Finally, we are concerned about the cursory mention of ADSL Lite. It can be integrated into PCs and appliances and is easier to configure than ADSL per se - yet is almost ignored by OFTEL.

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