BT 2012 Annual Report Download - page 20

Business 17
Europe and overseas
We are Europe’s largest telecoms services wholesaler by revenue,
accounting for around 18% of total European wholesale revenue.
European wholesalers by revenue
18%
13%
11%
8%7%
43%
BT
France Telecom
Deutsche Telekom
Telecom Italia
Telefonica
Other
Source: Ovum, Aug 2011 (based on 2010 data)
Internationally, we compete with the wholesale divisions of local
incumbents and alternative network operators as well as global
wholesale telecoms companies.
Wholesale broadband
Our broadband footprint reaches more than 99% of UK homes and
businesses, making us the UK’s largest wholesale provider of broadband
in terms of reach. We sell to CP customers who have their own
broadband infrastructure but choose our services outside their own
network footprints, as well as providing managed wholesale services to
ISPs and other parts of BT.
For those CPs who wish to invest in building their own networks
Openreach rents the copper access lines to the CPs who put their own
equipment in the exchanges. This is called Local Loop Unbundling
(LLU). The competitive market place for broadband has stimulated
growth in LLU.
Openreach continues to see a steady rise in the number of unbundled
exchange areas, which over the last three years has risen by around 11%.
Gifgfik`fef]leYle[c\[\oZ_Xe^\jXe[Zfee\Zk\[gi\d`j\j
100
80
60
40
20
0
%
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
82% 84% 85% 89% 93%
33% 36% 37% 44% ,'
Source:
BT and Post Office data % unbundled exchanges
% households served by unbundled exchanges
Bandwidth demand
The wholesale market is adopting next generation communications
services for data connectivity, such as Ethernet, IP voice and higher
speed broadband over copper and fibre. Bandwidth growth is
accelerating as customers move onto higher speed broadband services,
something which has resulted in capacity on our network increasing by
eight times over the past six years.
The UK’s spectrum auction expected in 2013 and the subsequent
introduction of 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) services are likely to
significantly increase demand for mobile data services. We are working
with all UK mobile operators to help them efficiently meet this challenge.
Products and services
We sell to wholesale customers through Openreach or BTWholesale
depending on the product or type of customer. Openreach offers
its products on an equivalent basis to all CPs consistent with BT’s
Undertakings (see page19). BT Wholesale offers a range of managed
products and services, many of which are based on the access products
that Openreach provides to all CPs.
Wholesale Line Rental (WLR)
Openreach sells WLR which is used by CPs to offer telephony services using
their own brand, pricing structure and billing, but using our network. CPs
do not need to invest in additional equipment or infrastructure to use WLR.
Local Loop Unbundling (LLU)
As an alternative to buying WLR, CPs can rent the copper lines between
BT’s exchanges and customer premises from Openreach to provide voice
and broadband services using their own equipment.
Wholesale broadband
BT Wholesale offers a range of wholesale broadband services, delivered
over copper and fibre. Our traditional broadband products, including
IPstream, Datastream and IPStream Connect, offer speeds of up
to 8Mbps (ADSL). Wholesale Broadband Connect (WBC), our next
generation family of broadband products, offers speeds up to 20Mbps
(ADSL2+) over copper. We also offer broadband services over fibre. WBC
FTTC offers downstream speeds of up to 40Mbps and up to 80Mbps and
WBC FTTP offers speeds of 100Mbps and 110Mbps.
Our WBC copper and fibre services are certified as meeting the
mandatory Government security assurance levels required to support
Public Services Network (PSN) opportunities in the UK.
Details of these services are available at
www.btwholesale.com
Super-fast fibre-based broadband is provided by Openreach through
our Generic Ethernet Access (GEA) product. There are two variants of
GEA, FTTC and FTTP. FTTC uses fibre to provide high connection speeds
from the exchange to a street cabinet near to customer premises, and
a copper line for the final connection to the premises. FTTP uses fibre
for the whole route from the exchange to the customer. We plan to
launch a 330Mbps downstream product during 2013 and are testing
a1Gbpsservice.
Details of these services are available at
www.openreach.co.uk
Customers, markets and products
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