Local Loop Unbundling (LLU) – the regulatory process of allowing other telecoms players to use Telkom’s last mile copper infrastructure – has started to make headlines again this year. LLU is being touted a potential contributor to ushering in a more competitive telecoms and broadband market.<\/p>\n
LLU is however nothing new, and as far back as 2006 former Minister of Communications Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri announced the appointment of the Local Loop Unbundling Committee, chaired by Prof. Tshilidzi Marwala. The committee finalized policy and regulatory recommendations in May 2007 to consider the best model for a successful local loop unbundling (LLU) process. The minister then made a policy decision that the unbundling process should be implemented and completed by 2011.<\/p>\n
The Chairman of the Local Loop Unbundling Committee Professor Tshilidzi Marwala said in mid-2007 that the LLU process will be completed in 2011 adding that this should not be mistaken as giving Telkom another four years of monopoly.<\/p>\n
Marwala said at the time that he believed that ‘by the end of 2007 all the mechanisms will be in place for Telkom to open up the local loop to rivals’. Marwala added that he expected Telkom to start giving rivals access to its copper infrastructure by January 2008.<\/p>\n
2011 deadline unlikely to be met<\/strong><\/p>\n It is now two years later and very little has happened in the LLU space. LLU is such a pressing issue for smaller telecoms providers that the Internet Service Providers’ Association of South Africa (ISPA) earlier this year called on ICASA to confirm that it is on track to meet the November 2011 deadline for the unbundling of the local loop.<\/p>\n “We are deeply concerned that we have yet to see draft regulations about local loop unbundling (LLU) from ICASA,” said Ant Brooks, General Manager at ISPA. “Many industry commentators are expressing doubts that the regulator will be able to meet the deadline for this vital regulatory intervention. We therefore appeal to ICASA to provide telecoms users and service providers with an update about the status of the LLU process.”<\/p>\n ISPA’s concerns are justified. According to Steve Lewis, Telkom’s Group Executive of Strategy, it is becoming near impossible to meet the November 2011 deadline as no regulatory systems and other guidelines are close to finished.<\/p>\n Lewis said that they will follow the lead from ICASA and the Department of Communications (DoC) to make LLU a reality, and added that they are implementing bitstream-like services – of which the first is IPStream – to serve their wholesale customers until full LLU is realized.<\/p>\n According to Lewis their ADSL wholesale services (IPConnect and IPStream) are currently provided at close to the cost price of the service, something which made it possible for ADSL service providers to bring more affordable and innovative ADSL data services to the market.<\/p>\n When LLU arrives…<\/strong><\/p>\n While some industry commentators warned that consumers should not expect LLU to be a silver bullet, resulting in immediately lower prices and higher speeds to consumers, it is likely to have an effect on ADSL access prices.<\/p>\n iBurst CEO Jannie van Zyl said that they are already deploying DSLAMs (to provide ADSL) in areas where the copper infrastructure does not belong to Telkom, and will definitely make use of Telkom’s local loop when LLU kicks in. <\/p>\n Van Zyl warned that consumers and industry players should guard against creating too much hype around LLU as it is only one aspect of driving down prices of ADSL, but added that he expected Telkom to quickly drop both their analogue line rental and ADSL access charges after LLU arrives.<\/p>\n Neotel CTO Angus Hay said that he sees LLU as a key ingredient in creating a more competitive fixed line broadband market, and added that it is part of their strategy to use a variety of access mediums – including infrastructure from potential partners – to get to as many customers as possible.<\/p>\n ADSL and Local Loop Unbundling<\/a><\/strong> <\/a><< Discussion<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Industry players give their views on what effect LLU will have on the local market; price cuts predicted when it kicks in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adsl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11637"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11637\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}