Telia to offer bitstream

Telia will be offering bitstream access to wholesale customers in Sweden. With bitstream access from Telia, competing operators will now have several possibilities to offer broadband service to their customers through Telia’s network.

Today, the Swedish Supreme Administrative Court (Regeringsrätten) announced that it will not grant TeliaSonera leave to appeal the decision made by the National Post and Telecom Agency (PTS) on bitstream access in Sweden. As a consequence of the court’s ruling, TeliaSonera will now develop a wholesale offering for bitstream access in accordance with the requirements laid down by the PTS.

TeliaSonera has maintained that bitstream access on the terms and conditions of the PTS would mean that investments made by TeliaSonera for its customers could be utilized by competitors which, in turn, would not have to make any investments of their own. Today, about half a million broadband customers in Sweden are purchasing broadband service from other operators in Sweden that have chosen to buy the simpler LLUB (Local Loop Unbundling) service from TeliaSonera and made their own investments.

Bitstream is an advanced form of LLUB, which is a raw broadband product. There is a third possibility in which other operators can resell Telia’s ready-to-use Skanova Broadband service. In all cases, the other operators handle relations with their own end-user customers.