Openreach
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Openreach is a division of United Kingdom Telecommunications operator BT Group, established after BT reached an agreement with Ofcom [1] to implement certain undertakings, pursuant to the Enterprise Act 2002, after Ofcom's [2] strategic review of telecommunications.
The division was created to "Ensure that all rival operators have equality of access to BT's own local network". The local network or "access network" is the wiring connecting customers to their local telephone exchange, starting at the Main Distribution Frame (MDF) in the exchange and ending at the network termination point (NTP) at the end user's premises. Openreach also manage the connections between the MDF and the BT Wholesale/Local Loop Unbundling (LLU) termination points located in the exchange, often referred to as jumper connections.
BT's call-out engineers also appear under this division and install and maintain the physical wiring into end users' premises regardless of which telecoms provider is actually retailing the service to the end-user.
Openreach installs, services, supports and maintains the wiring, fibres and connections which link tens of millions of homes and businesses in Britain to their Communications Providers' networks. The organisation's two major product lines are Local loop unbundling (LLU) and Wholesale Line Rental (WLR).
Openreach works on behalf of 400+ service providers in the UK. Their customers include such companies as AOL, BT, Orange, Tiscali, TalkTalk, and BT Retail. These companies hire Openreach to install/repair/provide a working service to anywhere within the UK.
In the last quarter of 2007, Openreach made the decision to cut non-essential network investment not affecting its undertakings from Ofcom in order to reduce its expenditures before the end of the financial year 2007/08. This is known internally as the Capital Expenditure challenge or CAPEX for short.
The main focus of Openreach's efforts is to reduce the average cost per job in provision and repair of the local loop without disadvantaging any customer or degrading service to end users. An example of this is reducing the laying of duct and providing service using a cheaper overhead method wherever possible. Most proactive repair work has also been suspended in order to concentrate efforts into reactive repair and bring service back to customers and their end users during difficult climatic conditions.
[edit] References
- ^ Undertakings given to Ofcom by BT pursuant to the Enterprise Act 2002
- ^ Ofcom's Strategic Review of Telecommunications
[edit] External links
- Openreach Homepage
- Openreach Products
- Ofcom: Implementation of BT's Undertakings
- Introduction to Openreach's key product, Wholesale Line Rental 3 (WLR3)
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