Ofcom Urges BT To Open Its Network To Rivals
Media regulator, Ofcom, has laid out phase two of its new telecommunications guidelines as the market moves from analogue to digital and has warned telecoms giant British Telecom (BT) that it must let rivals have ‘real equality of access’ to BT phone lines.
As BT currently owns the majority of the telephone and broadband lines in the UK, Ofcom has said that ‘BT is required to allow its competitors to gain genuinely equal access to its network and also allow BT to commit to behavioural and organisational changes to ensure that its competitors benefit from access to products and products equivalent to those provided by BT.’
Chief executive, Ben Verwaayen, of the telcoms giant told BBC Online: “We welcome Ofcom’s call for a new settlement – where regulation is tightly focused on the parts of the market that need it, with deregulation elsewhere.”
Although Ofcom wants BT rivals to have the same opportunities to offer both landline and internet services, it has so far ruled out full deregulation of this market.
Ofcom said: “For twenty years, regulation has failed fully to address the problem of BT’s control of the infrastructure connecting customers to the network. Much of this infrastructure is very expensive to replicate, as such, collectively it amounts to a series of economic bottlenecks upon which BT’s competitors are largely or wholly reliant. Without real equality of access to those bottlenecks, sustainable competition cannot flourish.”
Ofcom believes that a combination of truly competitive markets together with widespread consumer understanding of choices available to those markets amounts to the most effective form of consumer protection.
The media regulator added it is seeking a variety of options, including; improving the range, accuracy, accessibility and availability of neutral information upon which consumers base their decisions on, as well as trying to simplify the process of switching suppliers to make this as straight forward and cost effective as possible for customers.
Calls for BT to open its network infrastructure to rivals are nothing new. Earlier this year saw Ofcom appoint Peter Black, an experienced telecoms executive, as an independent telecoms adjudicator as part of the watchdog’s blueprint for growth of broadband in the UK. Amongst Black’s prime concerns is the increased unbundling of BT’s local loop, thus allowing third party companies access to local telephone exchanges to offer customers broadband and telephone services (see Ofcom Appoints Adjudicator To Boost Broadband Competition).
BT: 0207 469 2337 www.btplc.com Ofcom: 020 7981 3040 www.ofcom.org.uk
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