BT fined £42 million over late installations to telecom providers

Below is a statement from Gaucho Rasmussen, investigations director at Ofcom, highlighting the importance of these rules and how BT’s delays and lack of compensation can hurt consumers.  

These high-speed lines are a vital part of this country’s digital backbone.

We found BT broke our rules by failing to pay other telecoms companies proper compensation when these services were not provided on time.

The size of our fine reflects how important these rules are to protect competition and, ultimately, consumers and businesses.

Recently Ofcom convinced BT to separate their Openreach division into its own separate legal entity, allowing Openreach to serve all UK customers equally and not be used to give BT an unfair advantage in the telecommunications market.  

These changed will ensure that Openreach will be able to act without the influence of BT, allowing them to treat all of their customers in the same way and act outside of BT’s own corporate strategy. Hopefully, this will allow the company to accelerate their plans to upgrade and further invest in their infrastructure in ways that will benefit all of their customers. 

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