Hi RobertoS -

From what you've posted it may help you to understand more of the detail about the rules. It's a lot of reading, and during my time at Plusnet I had plenty of work to do in getting my head round what is and isn't allowed. The TSR is probably a good place to start, but suffice it to say I reckon you're a bit off base on this one.

The long and short is that BT Wholesale are free to make commercial deals with whoever they want, internal or external to BT Group. In this case a number of service providers have operated similar product lines for Wholesale over the years (Griffin for one I remember). I expect the pricing to the customer ended up being about the same as it would be now. Plusnet built a platform that is very efficient when it comes to managing those sorts of products, and it's a no brainer really that Wholesale would want to resell that. As I say, Wholesale sell the products of lots of companies, both owned by BT and not.

The main point about the regulatory environment BT are under is that there are strict rules that relate to cross-subsidisation for certain types of products and across the group, along with some other potential causes of anti-competitive behaviour in markets where BT have a monopoly (A monopoly that in the main part they were handed on a plate during privatisation!). To a point I think it's no bad thing to be cynical, and I for one would like to see them being more open in certain areas. But what I can say from personal experience is that BTs own regulatory team make sure the rules don't get broken and are pretty obsessive about doing so. The way the industry is, a lot of people move from company to company and word about uncompetitive behaviour would soon get about and result in potentially disastrous complaints to the regulator, even if internal people haven't blown the whistle first.

/me goes back to lurking

Ian

Edited by IanWild (Sat 25-Apr-09 20:33:24)

PS - I'll ask Seb to drop my ISP tag - I think this must be the first post I made since I left...

.... and you might want to update your sig

LOL. Nice Spot

Thanks Ian, that's a very well-reasoned and helpful post. As I'm suffering from a very bad cold at the moment I don't feel inclined to look into the linked document just yet .

I do have views on the current setup of BT, which may be affected by that document.

I hope things are going well for you. I forget where you went, but remember many here wished you luck and were sorry to see you go. I didn't really know anything about you at that time, but you were clearly well-liked .

Who is your ISP now?????????

Hope you haven't been black listed yet by BY

Edit
Typo re BT but didn't bother to change.

Edited by Apprentice (Sat 25-Apr-09 23:27:49)

BT wouldn't turn away the business

In fact, in my own house in Sheffield I've never had a BT line, and Virgin has always met my needs. My dad lives in a village in the Peak district where I spend a lot of time though, and Plusnet there works perfectly well. There were points when I was staying over there for longer periods of time and I paid for Pro (I hate waiting for anything and I don't mind paying for a better level of service!) but now I've got it on the lowest cost product and it still seems fine. These days I'm happy enough to recommend Plusnet to people who will suit the product set, but I think even the guys there would be the first to agree that it's horses for courses and with such a wide range of providers offering Broadband services, Plusnet isn't always going to be first choice.

Ian

but I think even the guys there would be the first to agree that it's horses for courses

Yes indeed.

It's probably true to say that there are a lot of horses who are not aware of all the courses available to them unfortunately

Yes, I used to recommend Pro in appropriate cases, or the very cheap broadband/phone bundle for very light users.

Now the eighteen month (12 for Pro) contracts have been introduced with no money-back period I have yet to see anyone looking for an ISP fit into the new regime.

And following on from what Apprentice has said about "horses for courses", it still amazes me that so many Plusnet users seem convinced that there is no alternative to the throttling of other packages, which comes down to simply trying to maximise profit.

But we are way OT.