Oftel Ruling In Freeserve Case Upheld

by Robin Pilgrim, LawAndTax-News.com, London

21 April 2003

Ruling on Wednesday, the UK's Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) upheld the Office of Telecommunications' (Oftel's) decision with regard to a complaint made by Freeserve against the BT Group.

In March 2002, Freeserve complained that BT's wholesale department had breached competition law and abused its dominant position by giving BT Openworld, the company's ISP division, advance notice of a 40% reduction in wholesale broadband prices. This, according to Freeserve, allowed its competitor to put together price offers and marketing campaigns ahead of the market.

However, when Freeserve took the case to Oftel last year, the telecoms regulator found no evidence of anti-competitive behaviour, a ruling which was upheld by the Competition Appeal Tribunal last week.

Speaking in response to the ruling, Oftel's director general of telecommunications, David Edmonds welcomed the CAT's support for the telecoms regulator's decision. However, he added that:

'In the fourth area of predatory pricing, the tribunal has not commented on whether the reasoning in the original decision was correct, however, Oftel has undertaken to re-examine this aspect of Freeserve's complaint in the light of the tribunal's comments on the detail of the decision.'

Recommended