UK telecommunication News

BROADBAND REVS UP………..

Following its purchase of Be Broadband O2 have announced a high speed product of up to 24 Mps to be offered to around half the population of the UK. At first it is envisage it will only be offered to O2 customers and not to the public at large as the company see it as a tool for retaining customers rather than developing a new customer base.

NEW HIGHS FOR UNBUNDLED LINES

Just under 3m telephone lines have now been unbundled according to the office of Telecommunications Adjudicator up from 2.73 the previous month.

Rod Smith has been reported to have been appointed as Chief Operating Officer of the OTA.

Rod’s most recent post was as Managing Director of telecoms solutions provider, Marconi plc from 1990 to 2006. He brings with him a wealth of experience having worked with many of the telecommunications operators in the UK. In addition to being responsible for the direct business partnerships with Marconi’s UK customers, Rod oversaw several major product development programmes and managed field operations in the UK. Rod was a member of the Marconi executive board and served on several operational boards within the group.

FIRST RED BOXES DISAPPEARED MAYBE ALL CALL BOXES ARE SET TO FOLLOW

Following plans to review a raft of telecommunication services BT is set to announce that it will scrap thousands of pay phone call boxes.

At present BT is governed by a Universal Service Obligation (USO) to solely maintain services to all call boxes regardless of profitability. There are some 60,000 payphone call boxes of which around nearly 12,000 take less than £100 per year.

The sharp rise in the use of mobile phones has heralded the sharp decline in payphone usage and BT for some time now has argued that the mobile phone operators should share the cost of funding this service.

The USO was brought in to ensure that all citizens had equal access to reasonably priced phone services, now the European Commission is arguing that the whole basis of USO needs to be addressed and changed if not removed altogether.

In other European countries these services are jointly funded by all the carriers of that country while here in the UK in 1984 at the time of its privatisation BT were obliged to carry the full cost of the USO in the UK.

Britain’s 60,000 public payphones are under threat because of plans by Brussels to review the law under which BT funds and maintains them.

Under an historic agreement put in place at the time of its 1984 privatisation, BT is responsible for providing and maintaining call boxes around the country — even where it does not make money out of them.

The commitment is one of several so-called universal service obligations (USOs) that fall on the group as the country’s main telecoms provider.

Now the European Commission has announced plans to review the system amid lobbying that provision of services such as payphones is no longer relevant in the age of mobile phones and other new technologies.

Ofcom has been in conversation with BT to allow them the right for a trial of variable pricing to try to save the call boxes already in situ. The idea would be to run a 26 week trial in cities where preferential International rates could be offered to attract a greater usage of call boxes. It is understood that pricing would have to return to the standard level on completion of the trial period.

A spokesman for Ofcom stated that the view was that “ It will benefit all consumers over the long term for BT to be allowed to experiment with pricing.” However Ofcom would reserve the right to discontinue or change a trial at any time.

In another effort to try to save the payphone call box BT has extended the agreement it has in place with Barclays to HSBC to put their cash machines in modern type call boxes. BT has already built up a number of cash machine payphones with private ATM operators Cardpoint and Bank Machine. BT could earn up to £6,000 per year from each payphone that has a cash machine installed. It is believed that the success of these outlets will be there high visibility and opportunity to be serviced 24 hrs a day.

HOW DID IT HAPPEN – ORANGE WON’T SAY

It started at the beginning of the week but by Wednesday evening it culminated in a breakdown of the Orange network especially between 7pm and 9pm when all aspects of the network started failing. The operator has said that everything is now fixed and working Ok but would not be pressed into saying what went wrong only that investigations are ongoing.

Skype was ridiculed when their service failed a short while ago with many derogatory remarks being made such as – ‘Cheap calls Cheap network’. But we expect a better services from the established networks of the main airtime providers.

WE WILL WAIT UNTIL IT IS 3G

Vodafone has announced that it will not now carry the iphone while it is 2G they will only be interested in a 3G model, according to chief executive Aurin Sarin

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 16th, 2007 at 3:43 am and is filed under Telecommunication News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.