BT faces possible legal action from rival ISPs over preferential
treatment in the rollout of high speed Asymmetric Digital
Subscriber Line (ADSL) connections. AOL and Freeserve are said to
be outraged by an alleged abuse by BT of its market position.
BT is currently the only company offering installation of the ADSL
service to consumers, via its BT Ignite division. Many ISPs,
including BT’s own Openworld, have customer orders for ADSL but
doubt has been raised about the fairness of the allocation of BT
Ignite’s installation resources.
Andy Green, chief executive of BT Openworld told Reuters that
the ISP was connecting between 1000 and 2000 customers a week to
its service. In contrast, AOL and Freeserve are only being
allocated 100 installation slots per week each by BT Ignite and are
outraged that BT appears to be unlawfully abusing it market
position in favour of its own division.
In its defence, a BT spokesman said that the allocation of ADSL
is “transparent, fair and equitable” and that all ISPs are getting
approximately 40% of their orders. BT claims that it has marketed
ADSL much harder and more successfully than other ISPs and the only
reason AOL and Freeserve are not getting the same number of
installations as BT Openworld is that they are not placing as many
orders.
Both AOL and Freeserve are demanding that BT clarify the DSL
installation figures and that Oftel investigate the matter
immediately and are threatening legal action if the problems cannot
be resolved.
