Ofcom extends migration consultation period

Back in February Ofcom announced a review of migration between the
various metallic line broadband services. A consultation period to allow the
public and providers to have their say was announced, but the closing date has
been extended to 8th May 2012 from its original 23rd April 2012.

Hopefully full fibre FTTP services will get included, because exclusion will
result in a repeat of the full LLU mess we have now, in that six years after
the service was popularised people leaving these services are left with varying
methods for moving their telephone and broadband service to another service.
Even migrating to another full LLU provider can prove more expensive, often
negating any of the special half price offers that permanently exist.

Another area Ofcom should look into is the problem of line checkers, once a
line goes full LLU, the BT Wholesale checker refuses to provide any information
on a line, and the confusing message is often displayed saying something along
the lines ‘you need a BT line to be able to join our service’. Those who know a
little will be confused, as they know the telephone line is still ran by
Openreach a BT Group company, and those with no knowledge will assume they need
to return the line to BT Retail first.