On 23 March 2012 Ofcom published the consultation document and Notification entitled 'Waiver of BT's price notification requirements for charges in relation to the transfer and migration of legacy Ethernet services to new Ethernet services -Notification of a proposal to give consent to a shorter price notification period in a specific case' (the 'March 2012 Waiver Consultation').
In that document we proposed to give consent to a waiver of the price notification requirements in relation to the transfer and migration charges from BT's legacy Ethernet services (specifically Wholesale Extension Services (WES), Wholesale End-to-End Service (WEES) and Backhaul Extension Service (BES)) to BT's new Ethernet services (specifically Ethernet Access Direct (EAD), which would allow BT (i.e. Openreach) to introduce a pricing offer in advance of the normal 90 days' written notice period. We invited comments on BT's request and our proposal by 30 March 2012. This document sets out our decision to agree to BT's request and contains the formal Consent to do so set out at Annex 1.
Significant Market Power (SMP) services condition HH6 - Requirement to notify charges and terms and conditions ('Condition HH6') was imposed on BT by Ofcom's 2008 statement Business Connectivity Market Review - Review of the retail leased lines, wholesale symmetric broadband origination and wholesale trunk segments markets (the '2008 Business Connectivity Market Review'). In particular, SMP Condition HH6.2 requires BT to give not less than 90 days' notice of any amendment to the charges, terms and conditions for alternative interface symmetric broadband origination services with a bandwidth capacity up to and including one gigabit per second (referred to in this document as "Ethernet services"), before any such amendment comes into effect. The EAD services which are the subject of BT's request are subject to that SMP Condition.
In the remainder of this document we refer to Openreach instead of BT, as this is the operating division within BT responsible for supplying wholesale Ethernet services.
On 15 March 2012 Openreach requested that Ofcom consent to a waiver of the notification period referred to above to enable it to give effect to a price change earlier than 90 days. Openreach had previously published the document titled "ETH009/12 Technology migration from WES WEES BES to EAD launch pricing" which sets out details of the offer and Access Charge Change Notice OR269 ('ACCN OR269').
The document "ETH009/12 Technology migration from WES WEES BES to EAD launch pricing" sets out the details of Openreach's offer to its wholesale customers. The scheme consists of three elements. Firstly, a reduction in the connection charge ranging from 25% to 50% where customers chose to migrate their legacy Ethernet service to a new Ethernet service. Secondly, as part of migrating their service customers would be required to upgrade the bandwidth of the service. Thirdly, Openreach would not raise early termination charges for cancellation of the legacy Ethernet service, should these be applicable.