How does Broadband work when BT is sole supplier?

Question by frontera2: How does Broadband work when BT is sole supplier?
We are moving to a small village where BT wholesale seem to be the sole supplier of Broadband services however it seems that I can still use another ISP for my service.

How does this work? Does the ISP put it’s own equipment in the exchange or do they simply use the BT line and equipment? I so, does this mean I will have a BT IP address or one allocated by my ISP still?

Best answer:

Answer by clusp
Both,different ISPs have their own equipment in the exchanges, although in some areas where they don’t as yet have any equipment installed they rent blocks of lines from other ISPs. It usually depends on the size of the exchange and the feed area. OFCOM split BT up into it’s component divisions in order to make a level playing field a few years back so most of the DSL equipment in the exchanges was inherited by BT wholesale. Since then, where there has been demand and space other ISPs have put their DSL equipment into the loop.

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