Ofcom proposes migration price reduction.. BT jumps..
Ofcom has issues a consultation document following an investigation into broadband migration pricing which proposes that Ofcom should instruct BT to reduce its IPStream-to-DataStream migration charges to competing wholesale services from £50 to £11. Companies using DataStream have already complained over the varying fee they incur in comparison to the £35 migration charge currently applicable for IPStream-to-IPStream migrations.
This news will be welcomed by Tiscali, Thus, Telefonica and a few others who will have the most to benefit, as well as ISPs offering retail services based on these networks. The consultation document states "representations made by competing operators [Tiscali and Thus we presume] interested in relying on migration to accelerate the growth of their market share in the intermediate service market, that a migration charge in the range of £10 - 11 would make it commercially viable to use migration. Therefore, Ofcom considers that a £11 migration charge (as derived from efficiently incurred costs) is likely to significantly remove the existing barriers to migrating customers. This option would therefore satisfy the effective competition cost recovery principle."
On the same day, BT issued a statement about the reduction of all migration prices (both within IPStream services and between IPStream/DataStream services) to £11, effective May 1st.
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More information on the Ofcom consultation can be found here. [seb]
