Last week, the first 25 sites – out of over 650 now being processed – reached the stage when operators could place firm orders for co-location. Orders were placed at 14 of these 25 sites with an average of 1 or 2 operators per site. The target for BT’s unbundling in its most popular exchanges has been brought forward from July to April this year.
Oftel attributed the low demand to some of the operators who placed initial orders for space in September and had since stated they were not pursuing local loop unbundling at present and so did not place orders. It said that other operators want to wait until their top priority sites become available, while others were concerned about co-location costs.