As far as acronyms go ULL might not appear to be all that dynamic at first glance, but it's been heralded as the most important issue facing the industry today. Unbundling the local loop (ULL) would allow telecomms providers to offer a wide range of services to homes and businesses using the existing copper phone infrastructure. Laurence Blackall, head of Global Internet –- and a senior member of the Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) – sees the ULL issue as vitally important. "We need to look at local loop unbundling -- it is the biggest thing we need to look at," he said. He was speaking at a reception last night at the House of Commons hosted by the minister for ecommerce, Michael Wills MP. His support for ULL was echoed by Tim Pearson, chairman of ISPA who introduced the natty buzzword to the canape-quoffing bigwigs. Most intriguing of all was the "hear! hear!" voice of approval from a BT bod standing at the back of the marquee overlooking the Thames. BT, of course, closely guards its 80 per cent of this precious LL market so this prompt to open up BT to competition must have be said in jest, right? Some joke. Anyway, since ULL is going to be on the tip of everyone's tongues, The Register has come up with a few of its own acronyms just to differentiate between different regional ULLs. If they ULL in Glasgow, it could be called GULL. In Hull, it would be… err… HULL and in Birmingham it would be BULL. Don't say you never saw that one coming. And you, a Register reader… ®