eircom are launching their next generation network. Fibre to the estate is what it really entails. They are probably looking at how KPN in the Netherlands did theirs.
With NGN you don’t need exchanges. If eircom sold all their exchanges they’d make billions. With exchanges gone, LLU players would be quite screwed unless they have a large presence in every exchange. They don’t in Ireland. If they did, what could happen is what happened in Holland where the telco was not allowed to sell off the exchanges because of the high level of LLU. If a tiny percentage are on LLU though, well then the regulator and the EU might allow a telco to go right ahead and sell off the exchanges.
In the past three months Noel Dempsey has done nothing but talk about looking to the future and about NGN. NGN NGN NGN. LLU has not worked and may not work. Noel wants it brushed under the carpet as soon as possible. Now ComReg is starting with the NGN twaddle when they haven’t even fixed LLU.
Expect Noel and ComReg to let eircom do their NGNs on their own terms and expect exchanges to be sold off and LLU to have it’s throat slit to put it out of its misery. You can thank eircom, Dempsey, ComReg, ALTO and BT for this. At last ALTO has started to speak up but I think they left it too late and the same with BT. The future will see broadband via ducting controled by eircom with the only true competition being wireless services. This sunshine moment was brought to you by…
As I mentioned to you yesterday there was 24mb broadband being advertised in the UK for £14.95 per month.
Here 1mb is being sold for that price.