Latest Eircom High Court claim condemned by BT

Recent years have seen a number of complaints raised regarding Local Loop Unbundling (LLU) in Ireland with these complaints being raised by Eircom with ComReg as the target, although now BT has now hit out at the latest action taken out by Eircom.

A move to reduce the cost of line share from €8.41 to €0.77 for alternative Local Loop Unbundling operators, which had been praised by LLU operators Magnet and BT, was made by ComReg over the summer.

The decision by ComReg to drop the cost of LLU line share, however, saw Eircom lodging an appeal with the High Court last week for the third time.

Eircom had already successfully challenged a line share price of €0.39 that was proposed by ComReg back in 2005. Then ComReg were forced to withdraw a direction to set the line share price at €2.94 after another appeal by Eircom in 2008.

Chris Clark, the chief executive for BT said “BT Ireland is disappointed by Eircom’s legal challenge to ComReg’s direction of a substantial price reduction for local loop unbundling. We firmly believe that local loop unbundling has a significant part to play in the creation of competitive high-speed broadband in the Irish market. The price reduction proposed by ComReg was merely to bring Ireland in line with the rest of Europe.

He went on to add “It is appalling that Eircom and its prospective new owners, STT, a sovereign wealth fund, want to keep Ireland in the broadband slow lane by stifling competition. The consumer ultimately suffers – as Eircom continues to walk backwards slowly, consumers will not enjoy the full benefits of competition and innovation.”

There are currently only 16 500 people in Ireland that subscribe to LLU products even though alternative operators like BT, Smart and Magnet have invested millions of Euros into this area.

Source – Silicon Republic