Appendix 2: BT Undertakings: Key iImplementation Timeframes
286. Ofcom accepted undertakings from BT for its operational separation in September 2005. The agreed timetable for BT to complete implementation of the undertakings extends out to June 2010.
287. Key implementation dates for BT included the:
- Establishment of Openreach within four months of the Undertakings taking effect.
- Physical separation of Openreach's Operational Support Systems such that these systems are run physically separated for Openreach and the rest of BT by June 2010.
- Appointment of the Openreach CEO within one month of the Undertakings taking effect.
- Appropriately branding Openreach's:
- Stationery, website, web addresses and relevant buildings during the first 16 months of the Undertakings taking effect, and
- Clothing and vehicles as these are required to be replaced within five years of the date of the establishment of AS;
- (The timeframe for rebranding of other items were left to BT's discretion).
- Creation of BTS and BTWS product management teams within four months of the date that the Undertakings take effect.
- Introduction of new long-term incentive plans for relevant BT employees working for Openreach and BTWS as soon as reasonably practical, which was anticipated to be during the summer of 2006.
- Publishing of a Code of Practice which sets out how BT employees must act to ensure compliance with the Undertakings within four months of the Undertakings taking effect.
- Establishment of the Equality of Access Board within six months.
Provision of Equivalent Products and Services
288. Substantive implementation timeframes were allowed for achieving full "Equivalence of Inputs" on key wholesale services.
289. The BT Undertakings have a detailed timetable for achieving full Equivalence of Inputs, which involves a number of intermediate milestones to be met. These include:
290. The "Ready for Service" date which means the date from which an EOI product or service is available for use by other Service Providers for their new end-users, and is also available for use by BT (and is in use by BT) to handle all product or service events for New End-Users (being new after the RFS date). The RFS date is also the date of the start of the migration of the relevant installed base of End-Users.
291. The "Installed Base Migration Complete" date, which is the date by which the migration of all of the relevant BT installed End-User base to the EOI product is completed.
292. The full annex of equivalence timeframes from the BT Undertakings is below.
BT's Equivalence of Inputs Timetable
Taken from Annex 1, BT Undertakings
For Wholesale Analogue Line Rental, the RFS date will be 30 June 2007 and the IBMC date in relation to BT's retail analogue line rental product will be 30 June 2010. The following intermediate staged milestones between the RFS date and that IBMC date will apply in respect of Wholesale Analogue Line Rental:
- at least 30% of BT's relevant installed End-User base as at 30 June 2008 will have been migrated to the Equivalence of Inputs product by that date;
- at least 70% of BT's relevant installed End-User base as at 30 June 2009 will have been migrated to the Equivalence of Inputs product by that date.
For Wholesale ISDN2 Line Rental, the RFS date will be 30 September 2007 and the IBMC date in relation to BT's retail ISDN2 line rental product will be 31 March 2009.
For Wholesale ISDN30 Line Rental, the RFS date will be 31 December 2007 and the IBMC date in relation to BT's retail ISDN30 line rental product will be 31 December 2009.
For Wholesale Extension Service, the RFS date will be 30 September 2006, and the IBMC date in relation to BT's relevant retail Ethernet-based local area network extension service will be 31 March 2007.
The RFS date for Shared Metallic Path Facility will be 30 June 2006. The IBMC date in relation to asymmetric IPStream will be 31 December 2006.
The RFS date for Metallic Path Facility will be 30 June 2006. The IBMC date in relation to symmetric IPStream will be 31 December 2006.
For IPStream the RFS date will be 31 December 2005 and the IBMC date in relation to BT's relevant retail broadband service will be 31 December 2006.
For Backhaul Extension Service BT will have Equivalence of Inputs capable systems in place by 30 September 2006.
BT shall by 30 September 2006 launch a Wholesale Extension Service Backhaul Product which shall be offered on an Equivalence of Inputs basis.
With effect from the relevant RFS date, for those Communications Providers who wish to migrate their existing End-Users to the EOI product, BT will discuss with any such Communications Provider how their End-Users' migrations could be accomplished with minimum disruption to the Communications Providers' End-Users, their service and systems, dependent in particular on the volume of customers each Communications Provider needs to migrate. BT and the Communications Provider will endeavour to work jointly in achieving a smooth transition. In any event, subject to the provisions of section 20.3, the migration will be completed by the relevant IBMC date. For the avoidance of doubt this paragraph refers to customer migrations rather than product migrations dealt with in sections 3.7 and 3.8 of the Undertakings.
For Shared Metallic Path Facility and Metallic Path Facility the RFS dates shown above are the dates from which an Equivalence of Inputs product is available for use by Communications Providers and by BT (and is in use by BT) for new customers of products based upon that Shared Metallic Path Facility or Metallic Path Facility. The BT products to which the Shared Metallic Path Facility or Metallic Path Facility is an input are shown in paragraphs 5 and 6 above. The definition of End-User included in the RFS date definition set out in section 2 of these Undertakings shall be read accordingly.
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