Unbundling

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Unbundling refers to - especially in telecommunications and the IT industry - the separate offer of individual services that were previously only available as a bundle with others:

  • Unbundling of hardware and software
  • Unbundling of operating system and application

A common distinction is made in telecommunications market regulation :

Unbundling of the subscriber line

(English Local Loop Unbundling (LLU or ULL) , also unbundled access )

This is the requirement for fixed network providers with considerable market power for subscriber lines (TAL) to offer the connection service decoupled ( unbundled ) from their own connection services. Competitors (alternative fixed line providers) without their own line to the subscriber should thus be able to offer their own line-based services ( telephone connection , DSL , IPTV , video on demand, etc.). The subscriber line is connected directly to the network of the alternative network operator by means of collocation in the local exchange .

In Germany unbundling is specified in Section 84 of the Telecommunications Act (TKG). For Deutsche Telekom connections , this form of unbundling has been prescribed by the telecommunications regulatory authority since 1998 and confirmed by the Federal Administrative Court in April 2001 . In 2008, despite the fact that ULL unbundling has been available for ten years, around 40% of German households were not yet available for local loop leasing by alternative providers, as this business model in rural and small-town areas is not lucrative for competitors due to the high fixed costs of collocation .

From a technical point of view, unbundling of the subscriber line has been a problem since the use of VDSL2 vectoring , since all the signals in a cable bundle have to be processed using signal technology. Bitstream access by the provider should then be used here.

In Switzerland , access to competitors by means of collocation at the main distributor has been offered by Swisscom since April 1, 2007 , as provided for in the Swiss Telecommunications Act, which was revised at the end of 2006 . Several providers offer end customers an ADSL or VDSL connection without telephony based on the Swisscom network.

Line sharing

When line sharing is the variation of the frequency unbundling the local loop (ULL) where only for the provision of ADSL all connections used higher frequency spectrum is the TAL unbundled and used by alternative operators, while the traditional telephone service continues through the established network operators about the low frequencies of the local loop is provided. By the DSL splitter at the main distribution frame - location while the frequency spectrum is divided and the higher frequencies are directly to the DSLAM the Data- CLEC supplied while the lower frequencies by the switching equipment are processed the incumbent. From the provider's point of view, the same investments are necessary for DSL broadband access implemented through line sharing as for a fully unbundled subscriber line.

This advance service has been available in Germany since mid-2005 in a form that is regulated in line with the market.

Unbundling of broadband Internet access from the classic telephone connection

Fees for competitors for TAL usage
Approval
gungs-
date 		monthly fee for
entire VALLEY TAL section
from KVz 		Line
sharing
03/09/1998 20.65 DM (10.56 €)
02/08/1999 25.40 DM (12.99 €)
03/30/2001 24.40 DM (12.48 €)
03/18/2002 0€ 4.77
05/01/2003 € 12.48
07/01/2005 0€ 2.31
03/30/2007 € 10.50
07/01/2007 0€ 1.91
07/01/2008 01.78 €
04/01/2009 € 10.20
07/01/2010 0€ 1.84
04/01/2011 € 10.08 0€ 7.17
07/01/2012 0€ 1.68
07/01/2013 € 10.19 0€ 6.79
In addition, competitors have to pay one-off fees
for setting up or switching a local loop.

This is the default on the established network operators, its competitors providing DSL - broadband access to enable, without the consumer a simultaneously classical telephone connection entertain must ( Naked DSL ).

For many years this requirement was only implemented in Germany via the unbundled subscriber line, but not at the level of bitstream access , as specified in the regulatory framework of the European Union and although the Federal Network Agency issued a regulatory order for bitstream access in September 2006, its implementation by the German Telekom only took place with a significant delay from summer 2008. T-DSL resale as bit stream access light offered by Deutsche Telekom requires a conventional Telekom telephone connection maintained by the subscriber .

In Switzerland, the amended Telecommunications Act since April 2007 provides for both bitstream access and the marketing of Swisscom's telephone connection on a wholesale basis ( resale , in addition to the previously only DSL connection resale). Swisscom offers the "Access Line Optical" product in the fiber optic area https://www.swisscom.ch/de/business/wholesale/angebote/anschluesse/ALO.html as bitstream access and in the copper area the fully unbundled subscriber line https: // www.swisscom.ch/de/business/wholesale/angebote/anschluesse/tal.html as well as the product "Broadband Connectivity Services" at https://www.swisscom.ch/de/business/wholesale/angebote/anschluesse/BBCS. html .

Bitstream access is required above all by those competitors who want to offer comprehensive VoIP -based telephone services or triple play coupled with broadband internet access . This is not economical to implement on unbundling the local loop, because the valley rent due to the high collocation - fixed costs in sparsely populated areas with low power density is not worth the ULL network.

DSL offers from Telekom competitors with a bundled telephone connection from Deutsche Telekom on the basis of the T-DSL resale offered by Telekom as a bitstream replacement were almost unsaleable in the last time before the introduction of standalone IP bitstream access, so that The dominant position of Telekom in the broadband sector in the access areas not accessed via DSLAM collocation significantly strengthened, which the head of the Federal Network Agency described in January 2008 as unproblematic.

IT industry

In 1969, the US government on the basis of rose Sherman Antitrust Act lawsuit against IBM . To an unbundling to force the hardware and software. Until then, it was common for hardware manufacturers to pass on the associated software to their customers without additional payment (and usually as source code ). The independent software manufacturers ( ISV ) saw this as a distortion of competition.

In the course of the so-called browser war, something similar happened to Microsoft . Microsoft was forced to separate Internet Explorer from its Windows operating system or to create a less strong link, so that competitive products (e.g. Mozilla Firefox ) also had a chance on the market.

literature

  • Andreas Bluschke, Michael Matthews: xDSL primer . VDE-Verl., Offenbach 2001, ISBN 3-8007-2557-6
  • Remco van der Velden: Competition and Cooperation on the German DSL Market - Economics, Technology and Regulation. Mohr Siebeck Verlag, Tübingen 2007, ISBN 3-1614-9117-3

Single receipts

  1. ↑ Press releases from the Federal Network Agency
  2. ↑ Telekom DSL customer development 2008
  3. ↑ Financial Times Deutschland of January 29, 2008: only a few hundred DSL resale customer contracts in the fourth quarter of 2007 ( Memento of January 31, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ teltarif.de of January 23, 2008: Kurth: T-DSL-Resale-Stagnation unproblematic
  5. ^ Emerson W. Pugh, "Building IBM - Shaping an Industry and Its Technology," The MIT Press, 1995, pp. 319-320
  6. ↑ Burton Grad, A Personal Recollection: IBM's Unbundling of Software and Services, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing , Vol. 24, No. 1 (Jan – Mar 2002), pp. 64-71
  7. ↑ IBM Archives: 1960s . IBM . Retrieved November 12, 2010: " Rather than offer hardware, services and software exclusively in packages, marketers" unbundled "the components and offered them for sale individually. Unbundling gave birth to the multibillion-dollar software and services industries, of which IBM is today a world leader "