Broadband News

Wanadoo LLU secret not so secret

We reported on the news that Wanadoo is to run a LLU trial, with 500 users migrating onto a LLU platform in the Leeds areas. The Register discovered that Wanadoo will be informing customers of a 'network upgrade' rather than describing it as 'a migration on to a LLU based platform'. We have raised our concerns, that there may be customers who do not wish to take part in a trial...a copy of the reply from a Wanadoo spokesperson is shown below:

"Basically, the commitment we have with our customers is to deliver them a high quality broadband service, we believe that migrating customers onto our own network will allow us to offer a better quality of service and still maintain the great value for money pricing we offer today. We do believe that the vast majority of our customers are not interested in the technical details of how their service is provided. For those that do want to discuss any concern they have, we have included in the communication that we are sending a dedicated help line number which the customer can call. We can then discuss and address any concerns directly with them. The reason for doing this initial low volume of migrations is to ensure that we have our processes and policies right.

During the first migrations we are focusing on ensuring we get the migration process right and as such are not offering an immediate upgrade to their service. However we expect this to follow quite shortly after for these first customers. It is likely that as part of the migration process going forward we will look to offer a service upgrade at the same time as the migration but this is not the case for the initial migrations. ."

Wanadoo spokesperson

We feel that Wanadoo is probably correct, in that most consumers are not interested in how a service is delivered, just so long as it is, and at the price they expect. A migration from an IPStream service to a shared LLU service should be fairly straightforward, and should leave the telephone service unaffected. To hear that a dedicated help line will be available is useful, since the customer can then hopefully raise their questions directly with Wanadoo staff who are aware of the trial. One thing to consider perhaps is that BT Wholesale on the IPStream platform does do upgrades to the DSLAM's and networks, and many service providers regularly do not forewarn customers of potential short outages.

We look forward to hearing how the trial goes, and particularly what product developments will occur once the LLU platform is up and running.

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