You are wakened by the sound of the Today program on BBC Radio 4, then the Pips, then John Humphrys tells you it’s 7a.m. and your heart sinks. You get ready to leap out of bed when suddenly you remember it’s Saturday, and you fall back onto the pillow, hit the off button on your radio alarm clock and roll over for another hour or two of well earned blissful sleep.

That feeling of relief and well-being will also be felt by the growing number of CEOs of “calls and lines resellers”, who have chosen Singularity as their WLR3 Integration partner on the day Openreach announce they are turning off the SPG. The rest will be sitting bolt upright, wide eyed and frantically thinking about what to do next!

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The creation of Openreach, a separate division of BT, in the UK has accelerated the process of local loop unbundling and accelerated the growth in internet service delivery in the UK and the Openreach business has also proven to be a successful commercial entity in it’s own right.

Across the globe there is growing pressure to open up access to the existing copper local loop in order to facilitate a more rapid deployment of high speed internet services. Whilst the exact model of structural separation which will be choosen will depend on local circumstances, there is little doubt that the experience gained in deploying and operating the UK Openreach model will be of significant benefit to other countries, as they will be able to draw on the expertise gained in developing the process, system, technology and commercial solutions developed for the UK.

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A year into the rollout of WLR3, with the first CPs going BAU (business as usual) on the Equivalence Management Platform (EMP), it is worthwhile considering the progress made to date by OpenReach and what CPs should plan for in 2008. Let’s begin with a short recap of why WLR3 has become a hot topic, writes Barry McErlean, a Key Account Manager at the telco unit of Singularity.

Under the Telecoms Strategic Review Ofcom stipulated that BT Retail and third party resellers should use the same mechanisms to access the Openreach network, to ensure ‘equivalence of input’. The WLR3 (Wholesale Line Rental 3) standard specifies how CPs should interact with Openreach in future so they have equivalent access to the network. Openreach implemented a new system known as the Equivalence Management Platform (EMP). Communication providers (CPs) can access the EMP to purchase Wholesale Line Rental (WLR3) which will, in time, replace the WLR2 gateway previously provided by BT Wholesale.

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