BBC NEWS | Business | BT told to cut internet charges
Britain's telecoms regulator Oftel has ordered BT Group to cut its charges for wholesale internet access.
Oftel said it had told the phone company to reduce its prices by 17% following an investigation into unmetered access.
The investigation had concluded that BT had been charging operators for certain call routing and call management measures which were no longer necessary.
"The action taken today ensures that BT continues to recoup the cost of providing wholesale internet access, and that UK consumers continue to benefit from one of the world's most competitive dial-up internet access markets in the world," said Oftel's director general David Edmonds.
Its good to see Oftel actually find against BT (the UK's largest Teleco and ex-state owned) as they rarely seem to do it these days. Its perhaps not so good news for ntl as it has its own network and therefore can offer lower prices anyway (dial up ntl is £10 per month cf to AOL £17.99 per month), although I believe ntl' offnet service called ntl Freedom does make use of this (not 100% sure though).
Still Oftel's role is to keep the market competitive and remove Monopolistic practices. Sometimes it manages to do this, even if it has taken them 2 years to make a decision.
Posted by Paul Goodison at July 21, 2003 09:06 AM | TrackBack