Local Loop Unbundling: Wait and see
Local Loop Unbundling is on everyone’s lips, but when and how it will happen remains unknown. Speaking at a recent media event Minister of Communications Roy Padayachie said that “we ought to wait and see” what the model for local loop unbundling (LLU) will be to know whether its deadline of 1 November 2011 can be met.
Padayachie explained that the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) has assured him that the LLU project is on track to meet the November 2011 deadline.
LLU is a “vitally important thing to achieve,” Padayachie said, adding that the DoC was “still in discussion about the kind of model that should be encouraged.”
Local loop unbundling models
Currently the only reference we have to the LLU models being considered in SA comes from the recommendations made be the Local Loop Unbundling Committee in May 2007.
The appointment of the committee was announced by former Minister of Communications Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri in 2006. Professor Tshilidzi Marwala chaired the committee, and under his leadership it recommended three forms of unbundling.
These proposed structures for unbundling were full unbundling, line sharing, and bitstream access.
Under the full unbundling scheme other operators will be given access to Telkom’s ‘raw copper’. The committee warned that this means that LLU operators will have to take over responsibility for the ordinary telephone line when offering ADSL, or the customer would have to give up the service.
Line sharing in turn will allow Telkom to keep using the local loop to offer landline telephone services, but unbundle the higher frequency part of the spectrum available on the copper lines for Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) services.
Bitstream access allows incumbent operators like Telkom to provide wholesale data services to ISPs. The LLU committee outlined four different Bitstream options in their recommendation, namely
- resale of local traffic services,
- bitstream with collocation,
- bitstream without collocation, and
- resale of access services.
The committee indicated that full unbundling, line sharing and bitstream access can be concurrently implemented, saying that “this would allow innovations to be deployed in the competitive environment.”
Deadline set
After the committee made its recommendations Matsepe-Casaburri made a policy decision that the local loop unbundling process should have run its course by 2011.
“The regulator must institute a delivery timetable and define mandatory goals,” the committee recommended. “It is robustly recommended that the LLU is in an advanced stage of implementation by 2010.”
Defining “advanced stage of implementation”
With no LLU specific regulations in place it is difficult to argue that LLU was at an advanced stage of implementation by March 2011.
However, Telkom has been testing its IPStream service and confirmed their “customer half internet protocol access” (Chipac) service in February 2011.
It is understood that both services are being trialled and it is further speculated that Telkom itself sees the launch of IPStream and Chipac as a way to satisfy the DoC’s LLU demands.
Roelf Diedericks, CTO of Neology, also said that the combination of the two services can be considered a form of bitstream access.
According to Diedericks, Chipac provides lower-level Ethernet or circuit-based services over MPLS (Multi-protocol Label Switching), and IPStream is typically used to terminate point-to-point protocol (PPP) for customers, providing higher-level access for more consumer-oriented services such as ADSL.
“In effect it’s a precursor to full loop unbundling,” Diedericks said, pointing out that full unbundling was preceded by bitstream access in countries like Australia.
Some analysts and industry players have indicated that it may be possible to implement LLU by November, but that it’s unrealistic. Others have stated that it is simply not possible to achieve in such a short period.
While it is conceivable that ICASA may have the necessary regulations for LLU in place by 1 November this year, it is difficult to predict a fully unbundled local loop by the deadline, especially considering that the model is yet to be decided.
Should Telkom commercially launch IPStream and Chipac before the end of October, one wonders whether the DoC and ICASA wouldn’t regard Telkom’s IPStream and Chipac services a sufficient implementation of bitstream access and consider their LLU duties discharged.
LLU, the DoC and ICASA << Comments and views
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