topic Re: Comms UK Council Briefing to Industry in Everything else

Comms UK Council Briefing to Industry

Archer — Wed, 05 Apr 2023 16:16:19 GMT

I was reading the Comms UK Council Briefing to Industry titled “Replacing the PSTN” , which came out recently, and the following paragraph caught my attention.

“In addition, in areas where there is no fibre available yet and WLR has been withdrawn, there will be a drastically reduced pool of providers able to offer service, since SOTAP (Single Order Transitional Access Product) will only be available to a handful of major carriers who have equipment located within BT exchanges.”

My current exchange connection is ADSL and I expect this to be to case when PSTN Switch off arrives due to my location. In which case a move to SOTAP would be required.

A glance at Samknows, shows the only providers with equipment in my exchange other than BT are Talk Talk and Sky.

I know PN is part of BT but equivalence of access requires it to trade with BT like any other provider.

This raises a couple of questions;

If I found myself in contract with PN and they were unable to support the service required, where would I stand?

If events turned out as outlined above and I needed to change ISP would I be limited to BT, Talk Talk and Sky?

Can anyone comment or have experienced moving onto SOTAP?

Re: Comms UK Council Briefing to Industry

pjmarsh — Thu, 06 Apr 2023 10:53:37 GMT

The BT you are referring to is BT Wholesale who is who Plusnet and a load of other providers currently use as a supplier for ADSL (and other technologies). As far as I'm aware any ISP using BT Wholesale could in theory offer SOTAP. I'm not sure if it is available anywhere yet. I'm sure I read within the last few months that it hadn't been launched yet, though I might be mistaken yet. Someone said very recently that it is on the BT Wholesale price list now.

If Plusnet will or will not offer it, I haven't got a clue. What will happen when the PSTN (the product that the phone service uses) is withdrawn and ADSL is the only option, isn't something that has been released yet.

Re: Comms UK Council Briefing to Industry

RobPN — Thu, 06 Apr 2023 12:03:20 GMT

@Archer wrote:

A glance at Samknows, shows the only providers with equipment in my exchange other than BT are Talk Talk and Sky.

@Archer

I'm not saying you're wrong about your exchange, but unless something's changed, I've read several times in the past that Samknows is no longer updated and therefore cannot be relied upon.

Edit: typo

Re: Comms UK Council Briefing to Industry

bmc — Thu, 06 Apr 2023 12:46:22 GMT

For those who might be interested I think this is the Comms Council update referred to.

https://commscouncil.uk/wp-content/uploads/230331_Consumer_Guidance.docx.pdf

Brian