We saved BT executives from jail

In reference to community.zdnet.co.uk/blog/0,1000000567,10013694o-2000331777b,00.htm:

The British government was telling the monopoly operator in Britain to open up its long distance trunk lines for local telephone providers.

They didn't want to do this, they wanted to maintain their monopoly. So they hemmed and hawed and paid lots and lots of lobbyists to lobby the British Government to postpone and stall this effort, and then half-heartedly started working on the software mechanism to make this happen.

The British government didn't take too kindly to the lobbyists, And it blew up on them and they basically said "You have six months from now and then we start sending the execs of BT to jail".

sounds like apocryphal nonsense. The UK Governement would have been fined by the EU (happened elsewhere I think) if the pace of unbundling etc was inadequate but I doubt anyone was going to jail - Bill Gates is still at large, after all !