The Commission for Communications Regulation found that more than 50 per cent of LLU orders were rejected or flagged as undeliverable after acceptance by Eircom in November last year. Of those that were delivered, 17 per cent were late.
The report reveals issues with Eircom’s processes around LLU. It states that people seeking to take advantage of LLU “continue to have significant concerns about the current manual processes and procedures”.
It adds that such concerns “and the associated risk of poor customer experience pose real challenges for the current operators and other potential entrants into the LLU arena”.
For its part, Eircom has told ComReg it will introduce improvements to the processes this month, but says it sees little need for a fully automated system in the immediate future.
Operators have expressed concern that if Eircom’s revised plans don’t work, it will take 12 months to put an automated process in place.
In a briefing document responding to the report, lobbying group IrelandOffline said the high failure rate was delaying small business users from getting broadband. “Generally this results in downtime of phone and broadband service, which many businesses cannot afford and as a result the attrition rate from bitstream products to LLU products will remain low”.
Ireland Offline contrasted the situation with the mobile industry where seamless movement from one service to another had allowed it to thrive in Ireland. “The stats in this report show that it is a matter of luck that someone has a smooth transition from an Eircom or Eircom resold broadband product to an LLU product,” it concluded.
The ComReg report contrasts with the announcement from OpenReach, the access arm of BT, that the UK had reached the one million unbundled local loop (ULL) landmark on 8 November 2006.
The number of ULLs in Western Europe will grow from 10.9 million in June 2006 to 28.6 million by the end of 2010, according to a report from market research specialist Analysys.
James Kenny, businesss solutions manager at Digiweb said the pace of LLU “restricts the amount of new products and services such as Triple or quadruple play that can be provided over the existing line provided by the incumbent”.
As the cost of directly connecting a small business to fibre can be “cost prohibitive for most operators, the pace of LLU is restricting competition in the market and limiting choice and cost efficiency for the small business”.
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