Ofcom, the telecoms industry regulator that oversaw the unbundling of BT’s exchanges for use by competitors and has been asked to review the UK pay-TV market with regard to the perceived Sky stranglehold, has given BT the go-ahead to bid to supply the half-a-million plus customers currently receiving services from rival ISP Pipex.
This puts the bidding war into perspective, lining BT up for a bidding scramble with the aforementioned Sky, Virgin Media and the Carphone Warehouse, who own TalkTalk as well as AOL’s UK internet services. Orange and Tiscali, providers of ‘triple-play’ services, are also said to be keen to buy.
Following this, there have been rumours abound that Ofcom may, if it chooses to thoroughly review the pay-TV market, ask Virgin to open up it’s own cable network if it inherits the DSL services from Pipex.
BT was similarly stripped of its ‘monopoly’ status on UK landlines by Ofcom in 1999; the advent of Local Loop Unbundling (LLU) has seen the communications market change considerably since then.
Whoever inherits Pipex’s legacy will presumably also acquire the WiMax wireless network that the ISP had set up in conjunction with Intel – a great boost for Carphone Warehouse, BT and Virgin, but less of an incentive for Sky to close as deal, as they have stated in the past that they do not wish to get involved in the mobile phone market.
It is possible that an announcement on a deal may come by the end of this week; again, the main players are keeping schtum about the whole affair.
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