CMA to review BT whinge over superfast broadband price setting Blighty's competition watchdog is to review an appeal by BT against new rules designed to prevent the telco from setting unfair wholesale fibre prices for its rivals. In March last year the regulator Ofcom ruled that BT must maintain a sufficient margin between its wholesale and retail superfast broadband charges in order to …
Since BT Openreach and BT Retail are the same company, it means Openreach can set their prices really high and then let Retail sell on the services almost at a loss, and thus Oreach make all the profits.
That then makes it almost impossible for third parties to compete as they have to make a reasonable margin on the prices set by Oreach.
This then allows BT to sign lucrative deals with sports entertainment industry and have it subsidised by their competitors.
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@gadgetman:
No, they don't. There is no such company as BT Openreach. It's not even operated as a seperate entity internally. _everything_ about it is smoke and mirrors.
This is why New Zealand forced a 100% split between the line and dialtone sides of the incumbent telco (One of the few things they did right. Up to 2011, NZ was a poster child of how NOT to privatise your state-owned telco. Post 2011 the market is transformed thanks to preventing the incumbent pulling the crap that BT still does.)
That any solution that applies margin on margin is a good deal for anybody, I wonder how cheaply we could have broadband if we could buy it wholesale ourselves. Mind you that would assume that the monopoly supplier behaved honorably, BT, how likely is that.
Just a note that Talk Talk don't give you a years free broadband and a £50 shopping voucher, you still pay for them eventually, they just dilute their margin for the contract term and hope you stay on. Which speaks volumes about the margin available.
Well they don't give me one because I would not touch them with a bargepole, but they do to anyone smart enough to keep a diary (and you don't need to be a techie to work out dates, with no disrespect - really honestly, the traditional 'housewife' or 'barrow boy' were quite capable of doing this and did) - and people are learning.
Incidentally there was a very good deal on a TV + decent tablet from Sky over christmas 2015 - pays for a complete year of service if you have a diary.
Don't know about pensioners, shareholders more likely:
TalkTalk: https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=talktalk%20share%20price
BT: https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=bt%20group%20share%20price
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