Ireland customers lose BT as their broadband provider

A new agreement with BT will soon see mobile provider Vodafone taking over Irelands voice and broadband service and along with it BT’s customers.

Mobile provider, Vodafone will soon become the second largest supplier of fixed line broadband when, over the coming months, it gains a total of 3000 small businesses and 84 000 residential customers from BT. Telecoms operator, BT will be handing over its wholesale broadband network services as part of a new seven year contract.

The release issued by BT has stated that number of its employees will move across to Vodafone in order to ease the transition.

Using Local Loop Unbundling (LLU) to build up its business of wholesale broadband infrastructure and delivering corporate customers a range of networked IT services will be focused on by BT now that it no longer has its consumer business, with its first wholesale broadband customer being Vodafone.

Assets valued at around €4.8 million (US$6.8 million) were said to have been included in the transaction between the two companies.

This latest deal makes sense to Ireland, Companies and consumers with under 10 percent of BT’s business accounted for by Consumer business said Chris Clarke, the CEO for BT Ireland.

Clarke said “Our core focus has been the corporate market. And infrastructure-based competition hasn’t happened in Ireland.”

He went on to add that with the operator having already unbundled 22 exchanges in Ireland so far it was now planning to invest “multimillions” in order to unbundle a further 58 exchanges throughout the country over the next two years.

Two thirds of the broadband lines currently available in Ireland would soon be able to reach speeds of up to 24Mbps once the unbundling programme is completed according to a recent statement released by BT.

Source – www.lightreading.com