Openreach is a division of United Kingdom Telecommunications operator BT Group, established after BT reached an agreement with Ofcom [1] to implement certain undertakings, pursuant to the Enterprise Act 2002, after Ofcom's [2] strategic review of telecommunications. A division of a business entity is a portion of that business that operates under a different name The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK or Britain,is a Sovereign state located BT Group plc (formerly British Telecommunications plc) which trades as BT (ˌbiːˈtiː bee tee) (previously known as British Telecom and still The Office of Communications (Y Swyddfa Gyfathrebiadau or as it is more often known Ofcom is the independent regulator and competition authority for the Communication The Enterprise Act 2002 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which made major changes to UK competition policy with respect to mergers and also changed
The division was created to "Ensure that all rival operators have equality of access to BT's own local network". The local network or "access network" is the wiring connecting customers to their local telephone exchange, starting at the Main Distribution Frame (MDF) in the exchange and ending at the network termination point (NTP) at the end user's premises. Openreach also manage the connections between the MDF and the BT Wholesale/Local Loop Unbundling (LLU) termination points located in the exchange, often referred to as jumper connections. Local loop unbundling ( LLU) is the regulatory process of allowing multiple Telecommunications operators use of connections from the Telephone exchange 's
BT's call-out engineers also appear under this division and install and maintain the physical wiring into end users' premises regardless of which telecoms provider is actually retailing the service to the end-user. An engineer is a person professionally engaged in a field of Engineering.
Openreach installs, services, supports and maintains the wiring, fibres and connections which link tens of millions of homes and businesses in Britain to their Communications Providers' networks. The organisation's two major product lines are Local loop unbundling (LLU) and Wholesale Line Rental (WLR). Local loop unbundling ( LLU) is the regulatory process of allowing multiple Telecommunications operators use of connections from the Telephone exchange 's Wholesale Line Rental ( WLR) is a service in which a telecommunication operator takes control of all the connections made through a telephone line from the native operator and
Openreach works on behalf of 400+ service providers in the UK. Their customers include such companies as AOL, BT, Orange, Tiscali, TalkTalk, and BT Retail. These companies hire Openreach to install/repair/provide a working service to anywhere within the UK.
In the last quarter of 2007, Openreach made the decision to cut non-essential network investment not affecting its undertakings from Ofcom in order to reduce its expenditures before the end of the financial year 2007/08. This is known internally as the Capital Expenditure challenge or CAPEX for short.
The main focus of Openreach's efforts is to reduce the average cost per job in provision and repair of the local loop without disadvantaging any customer or degrading service to end users. An example of this is reducing the laying of duct and providing service using a cheaper overhead method wherever possible. Most proactive repair work has also been suspended in order to concentrate efforts into reactive repair and bring service back to customers and their end users during difficult climatic conditions.
References
- ^ Undertakings given to Ofcom by BT pursuant to the Enterprise Act 2002
- ^ Ofcom's Strategic Review of Telecommunications
External links
- Openreach Homepage
- Openreach Products
- Ofcom: Implementation of BT's Undertakings
- Introduction to Openreach's key product, Wholesale Line Rental 3 (WLR3)
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