LONDON -- Openreach today announced that its Local Loop Unbundling product has achieved an important milestone with the number of unbundled lines in the UK reaching half a million. This represents a fifty fold increase in the number of unbundled lines since the start of 2004.

This significant increase in the number of unbundled lines demonstrates that the LLU market is quickly gathering pace. On average, Openreach is currently fulfilling more than 20,000 LLU orders per week. With nearly twenty operators providing unbundled services from almost 1,000 local exchanges across the UK today, LLU is firmly established as a critical component of the highly competitive broadband market. The tremendous progress in LLU is the direct result of ongoing collaboration between Openreach, industry and the Office of the Telecommunications Adjudicator.

This latest achievement follows the recent introduction of reduced pricing for full and shared LLU products by Openreach, making it more cost effective for communications providers to move their end customers onto unbundled services.

Anne Heal, Managing Director Sales, Products and Marketing, Openreach said, “Hitting this half million milestone confirms that the LLU market in the UK is truly coming into its own. Openreach remains focused on making sure that the tremendous progress we have seen over the past few months continues. This is shown by both the planned price reductions and by the introduction of new products and systems to make it simpler for operators to migrate their end customers onto unbundled services.”

From 1st July, prices for operators wanting to migrate end customers in bulk from BT Wholesale’s broadband products to Openreach’s shared LLU product will be £25.39 (ex VAT) – 27 per cent less than the price for migrating a single user. Furthermore, with the launch of a new mass migration product for full LLU in late July, the price for migrating existing Wholesale Line Rental end users to full LLU on an aggregated basis will be £27.54 (ex VAT) – 21 per cent less than the price for migrating a single user.

Openreach