Net4Now :: News Story

Net4Now :: News Story

Be have chosen Alcatel for their new high speed ADSL2+ based LLU offering. This will allow them to offer a triple-play (voice, data and Internet where data can be any number of items such as TV), though initially only Internet services are being offered.

Be is unlikely to have the relationships to offer any kind of content at the moment anyway, and going the content route is a difficult game to play in, they'll probably have to partner with other companies who have content, but there'll be huge competition to get those relationships in place as all the LLU operators start offering content services.

Though the Alcatel kit has the ability to do sensible things with bandwidth reservation and quality of service, backhaul is still going to be difficult (and expensive), it accounts for a large ammount of the cost of running an LLU service.

Where current players have to worry about 2Mb/s or even 8Mb/s, offering 24Mb/s is pushing the requirements even higher. Since BT still own 85% of the infrastructure in the UK, it's likely Be will have to buy significant ammounts from them, and they definately aren't the cheapest supplier in the UK