Gaby Heppner-Logan, BT's director of regulatory affairs said: "BT has been working very hard to deliver the new Wholesale Line Rental product (WLR3) to industry and to ensure that all of BT's new customers for standard telephone lines are supplied with a service based on the new WLR3 product. The systems and processes are now in place, there is a major ramp-up in customer migration and six Communications Providers (CPs) are already using it with their respective customers.
“BT Retail is the first communications provider to start using WLR3 at volume. This has been achieved through a massive change programme, involving changing the systems and ways that thousands of people work. As with any new product introduction, we have been ramping up our use of WLR3 in a carefully controlled manner to minimise disruption for customers.
“From 1 July we believe we have been serving all new consumer and business customers using the equivalent systems and processes of WLR3 in line with our commitment to Ofcom under the Undertakings. BT has also started to migrate our existing PSTN customers to WLR3 ahead of the date committed to Ofcom.
“We will continue to monitor the ongoing implementation very carefully and may use fallback systems if required in order to sustain a high level of customer service. Given that BT may have to use such a fallback option, we will voluntarily continue with the 25p arrangements for each WLR line rented by Communication Providers for the month of July.”