LLU reaches half million landmark

There are now half a million unbundled phone lines in the UK, according to BT's broadband access unit, Openreach.

Unbundling allows BT's rivals to put their own equipment in the telco's telephone exchanges and offer broadband independently. Using unbundling can prove cheaper for high volume consumer players, such as Carphone Warehouse, and enables them to offer new speeds and services.

Currently around 20 providers offer unbundled services from more than 1,000 exchanges. In total, more than 500,000 lines have now been freed to date, with 20,000 new orders being put in with BT every week, according to the telco.

BT also recently cut the prices of migrating customers from its wholesale broadband offering to LLU products.

Despite the increasing pace of unbundling, LLU regulator the Office of the Telecoms Adjudicator (OTA) still has reservations about BT's performance.

According to the OTA's most recent monthly report: "The recent Openreach quality improvement plan requires a high level of co-ordination and service level management between Openreach and BT Wholesale. Our close monitoring of this plan has demonstrated some early signs of improvement; however the overall performance is still disappointing."