ADSL and telephone - without fixed line subscription
Budapest, June 1, 2006
Soon you will not necessarily need a fixed line phone subscription to use ADSL service: GTS-Datanet, Hungarian subsidiary of GTS Central Europe plans to launch local loop unbundling based ADSL2 service for business and residential customers in the second half of 2006.
Beside the 'naked' ADSL GTS-Datanet also provides traditional or IP-based telephone services - for no further subscription charges. The service will be available in call packages, while customers can keep using their telephones with their old telephone number. Using the 'naked' ADSL and telephone services of GTS-Datanet together, subscribers may reduce their telecommunication costs up to 20-30 percent.
GTS-Datanet local loop unbundling based telecommunications services will be available from this summer in the inner districts of Budapest. As a result of an aggressive network development, the company expects to cover 80 percent of the capital of Hungary with its new service by the end of the year, and by next year it will be available in other major Hungarian towns.
The option to subscribe to the 'naked' ADSL and telephone services of GTS-Datanet will be first offered to the current subscribers of the company. From the fall of 2006 the service will be available to everyone who has an ADSL Internet-connection and lives in an area where GTS-Datanet already performed the necessary network development and upgrade works. The company makes efforts to make the service available to those not having yet an ADSL subscription but the actual implementation depends on the relevant regulations.
Technical background of the new service: local loop unbundling
The 'naked' ADSL and telephone services of GTS-Datanet are based on local loop unbundling (LLU). LLU means that GTS-Datanet rents the line between the local exchange and the subscriber's device ('loop') from the owner T-Com and provides the subscriber with its own telecommunication services.
Currently LLU is the only cost-effective solution for the Hungarian alternative telecom service providers to be able to offer services to residential and low-traffic business users, as they do not need to build up lines to get to the subscribers - the enormous costs of that could not be balanced by the expectable income even in the long run.
The first time LLU was regulated in Hungary was in the Telecommunication Act that went into effect on December 23, 2001. However, the technical conditions and high loop-rental fees of the incumbent telecom providers approved by the authorities have not yet made it possible for the alternatives to launch LLU based services in an economic way. Thanks to the more and more strict and efficient attitude of the National Communications Authority regarding the incumbent providers, many of the obstacles are overcome by today. With the decreasing LLU costs and the changing technical requirements, now there is a real opportunity for the alternative providers to launch LLU based telecom services at a reasonable price.
"In order to be able to launch LLU based services, GTS-Datanet will invest more than a billion HUF into building its new-generation network in 2006, and this is only the first stage of our three-year network development program" said GTS-Datanet CEO Géza Szathmári. "Our company wishes to reach 30,000 broadband customers within a year. We base our ambitious expectations on the result of our market research. A survey ordered by GTS-Datanet showed that 50.5 percent of our ADSL subscribers would find it attractive to receive only one bill about their telephone- and Internet usage - from our company", he added.
