Calls And Lines

BT has this week cut the prices on its bundle telephony and broadband services after last year saw the UK telecoms regulator Ofcom removed monopoly restrictions. In competition with BSkyB, TalkTalk, Virgin Media and Carphone Warehouse, BT is basically offering UK calls for free.

The bundle comprises 20Mbps broadband and calls to UK landlines, 0870 phone numbers and 0845 numbers (at any time) for under a tenner a month. The price is the same as BT’s broadband only package, so calls are basically free. Not as cheap as Elite, but still pretty good!

The beginning of the week was heralded by European antitrust officials accusing Telekomunikacja Polska, the main telecoms company in Poland, of abusing its dominant market position.

Now owned by France Telecom, Telekomunikacja Polska was raided in late 2008 and now the preliminary findings of the European Commission is that Telekomunikacja Polska had not provided remunerated access to its network, thereby abusing its position as the dominant telecoms company.

As a result of this abuse, many other telecoms companies had to undergo long and difficult processes to gain access to its network. The European Commission has given Telekomunikacja Polska eight weeks to respond to the charges and the company could face fines. A huge deterrent I’m sure.

France Telecom is having a busy time of it lately as it tries to restore order after the Xynthia storm hit France. Since the end of February, around 2,000 technicians form France Telecom have been working around the clock to right the wrongs the storm caused. Fixed-line phones and broadband for 170,000 people in the Centre, Poitou-Charents and Pays de la Loire areas  are down, with many more sites losing their power supply, thousands of Orange customers affected by non-existent mobile coverage and a further 100,000 phone lines down due to fallen trees. Even with over 2,000 technicians on the case, the problems should take around 3 weeks to fix. Bad news for France Telecom.

After the initial consultation and new regulations implemented by Ofcom concerning Wholesale Line Rental (WLR) last October, the UK telecoms regulator set out another consultation concerning further aspects of WLR charge controls. After considering the responses to the consultation, Ofcom has decided the following:

-The complete introduction of WLR core services begin after the implementation date (July 2010) of WLR3 functionality in Openreach’s Release 1400.
-A cap of £110 is to be introduced on the WLR Premium charge up until July 2010.
-Ofcom will remove the basis of charges (cost orientation) obligation on specific higher care services linked to WLR.

To read the full statement, visit http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/wlr/statement/

Consumer group Which? has said that BT could be breaking the law after an investigation found the company failing to comply with UK distance selling rules. According to the investigation, BT does not give its customers ‘sufficient cancellation rights.’ In most cases where customers had renewable contracts, customers weren’t informed of their termination rights until it was too late to cancel without being charged. Naughty naughty BT!

Following adverse weather conditions and freezing temperatures, the UK’s Network Operators, including BT, declared matters beyond their reasonable control (MBORC) force majeure event across the UK in December 2009 and January 2010. These extreme weather conditions caused the reduced mobility of the UK’s engineering workforce and reduced the numbers of people able to get to control centres. The industry continues to see the impact of this in February as BT and other UK Operators catch up with their engineering workloads, installations and fault repairs. The result means that the Openreach Engineers are experiencing delays to normal installation lead times.

BT shares fell by nearly 9% last Friday (12.02.10) after its 17 year plan to expunge its £9 billion pension fund deficit failed to impress the Pension Regulator.

The pension trustees and BT agreed upon the 17 year plan to plug the deficit which will begin with BT putting £525 million a year into the fund for a period of three years before increasing the amount. Experts believe that the Pension Regulator is unhappy with the fact that BT’s ten year plan has been vastly extended as the debt spirals even further out of control.

The trustees of the BT pension fund have approved a plan to fill the huge £9 billion deficit in the BT pension fund – however, the Pension Regulator has expressed some unnamed concerns over the plan. BT’s plan is to add an addition £525 million per year into the fund, over a period of three years.

According to the triennial funding valuation for the pension scheme, the scheme’s assets are now valued at £34 billion from £31 billion. Let’s hope that if BT goes ahead with the recovery plan, it actually works!

Although BT only upgrades exchanges if there’s a profit in it, for the Scottish government BT will make an exception it seems. In rural parts of Scotland – i.e. anywhere other than the main cities, a lot of people are getting fed up with the phone reception and broadband service. This is about to change in some rural parts of Scotland as both the Scottish government and BT fund an upgrade for the phone exchanges. The areas that will benefit are: Argyll and Bute, Caithness and Sutherland, Dumfries and Galloway, Lochaber, Moray and Skye and Wester Ross. It’s about time too! Many rural areas of Scotland still rely on phone boxes for a decent phone call – and some of these can be in the middle of nowhere as well…

Controversy rages in New Delhi, India, after authorities cut power to around 300 mobile phone towers, citing a decades-old rule banning commercial activities in residential areas.

The swift blow was struck over the weekend and without warning. It put a third of the Noida’s mobile phone towers out of commission and left a lot of people unconnected and angry.

In India, mobile phone usage is extremely high as mobiles are more widely available than landlines. This most recent incident highlights how the old rules of India are battling with the needs of a modern world.