Case Studies

Local loop unbundling

Local loop unbundling – the use by competitor telecommunications operators of the incumbent’s lines from the customer’s premises to the trunk network – is seen as a way of opening residential and SME telecommunications markets to more competition by removing the effective monopoly of the owner of the ‘last kilometre’ of the telecommunications network. Vincent led the legal team at Oftel (then the UK telecommunications regulator) negotiating the first detailed implementation of the obligation on BT to offer unbundled local loops for competitor use. Negotiation (and, ultimately, determination) of the terms for supplying them – service levels, terms of access to BT exchanges, provisioning timescales, dispute resolution – formed the core of his work on the project. Local loop unbundling now supports a significant proportion of the UK’s broadband services, with over 7 million unbundled loops being used in this way.