The Department of Communications  has set a target of having local loop unbundling (LLU), which would give competitors access to Telkom’s copper network, finalised by November 2011, but exactly what “finalised” meant was still in question.

Telkom Business enterprise markets senior managing executive Brian Armstrong said on Thursday he expected the “LLU roadmap” to be finalised by this date but that practical implementation would take longer. It was also yet to be decided what form the LLU would take, and this would determine the impact it would have.

“There is still a lot of debate required,” Armstrong added.

A report on LLU was commissioned in 2007, by then Communications Minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri, and made recommendations on LLU in South Africa. This report then informed departmental policy, stating that LLU should be completed by November 2011.

The report stated that it would be “appropriate to have a combination of three unbundling models, namely: full unbundling, line sharing and bitstream (wholesale) access”.

However, the exact model of unbundling that would take place in South Africa was yet to be revealed.

Full unbundling would mean that other operators were given access to Telkom's copper network, while line sharing would allow Telkom to keep using the local loop for landline telephone services, but unbundle the higher frequency part of the spectrum available on the copper lines for Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) services.

Bitstream access lets Telkom provide wholesale data services to Internet Service Providers (ISPs). This could also be done in different ways, namely: the resale of local traffic services, bitstream with collocation, bitstream without collocation and resale of access services.

Armstrong noted that bitstream access was already available to ISPs.

Other industry commentators have also voiced scepticism over meeting the November deadline, and said that while the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa might have regulations in place by then, actual implementation of the unbundling was likely to take longer.

LLU is heralded as one of the last remaining barriers to be tackled for a more affordable and competitive Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) landscape in South Africa, and Neotel, for one, is often pushing for the fast-tracking of LLU.

Decisions on who would maintain the local loop, and police cable theft would also need to be made.

The local loop is described as the portion of the telecommunication (telecom) network situated between the end of subscriber’s telephone connection and the main distribution frame, where all the user lines come together, before being connected to the telephone exchange.

LLU was intended to facilitate affordable open access, lower prices of telecoms, and offer a wider choice of access to ICT services, by ensuring that service providers have equal access to the previous incumbents infrastructure. Such open access and customer choice would not be meaningful without ensuring that customers can switch between service providers expeditiously.

Armstrong said that Telkom’s “best defence” against LLU was to “remove the desire to move [to another service provider]” for the customer. To do this Telkom would be focusing on its value proposition to customers, as well as products, and ensuring that customer satisfaction was upheld.