There is a lot of talk in the market around using LLU (Local Loop Unbundled) broadband lines in the business market as an alternative to BT.
LLU is where BT allows telecommunications operators to use the twisted-pair telephone connections from the telephone exchange's central office to the customer premises. BT's network division is expecting growth in the number of unbundled telephone lines to double this year, taking the total lines towards three million. Companies including Sky, Orange, Tiscali, C&W and Carphone Warehouse have all invested heavily in LLU to grab a slice of the consumer broadband market and to help justify their investments many are creating business variants and offering them to the channel.
ISPs that simply buy managed LLU tails to re-sell will share the same capacity as all the other customers on that network. This means that at certain times of the day the speed of the network may slow to a crawl. More sophisticated ISPs will buy pure bandwidth (often using an L2TP interconnect) from the LLU operator and construct their own products. With L2TP the traffic can be managed separately and the ISP has more control over the quality of the product.
LLU operators will typically rent the tail from the exchange to the end user at around two-thirds that of BT and Resellers will often consider using LLU either where price is a real consideration or alternatively where the end user requires resilience.
The more applications than run over the broadband circuit, the bigger the risk of critical failure. Where BT’s Standard and Enhanced care products are considered to be inadequate the solution may be found in LLU. Although they may share the same ducting from the exchange to the customer’s premises the LLU operator has physically separate equipment in the exchange and a physically separate connection from the exchange to their network. Although LLU does not guard against someone digging through a cable or the exchange catching fire it may give more sensitive customers comfort that they have a degree of resilience.
According to BT Openreach at the beginning of November 2006 only 1250 local exchanges (22%) had an LLU presence. This may seem small but actually it represents around 60% of the business population. Obviously not all LLU operators are in all 1250 exchanges so to get maximum coverage it may be a good idea to choose an ISP that has a strategy of broadband aggregation i.e. buying from multiple suppliers and providing them as components for Resellers to package into products themselves.
Source: Comms Dealer April 2007
Andrew Dickinson
Sales and Marketing Director
