BT faces legal action over ADSL

AOL and Freeserve have continued their campaign to right the wrongs of BT's wholesale ADSL business, after it was suggested earlier this week that BT's own ISP Openworld may have been receiving preferential treatment. As we reported yesterday, the ADSL installation arm of the telco, "BTIgnite," handles nearly 500 Openworld customers a day, but a meagre 20 or so between AOL and Freeserve. According to AOL, BT's alleged cross department bias could be cause for some form of legal action. Speaking to ZDNet, AOL's chief counsel Clare Gilbert said that "Openworld is not the largest [ISP] player in the country, yet it seems it is being allocated more installations than its competitors". Continuing, she said that "Only BT or Oftel can provide the information on whether this is true. If so, it's a serious breach of BT's obligations as a former monopoly to act in a fair way to ensure competition for consumers." ADSL and other forms of Digital Subscriber Line are a hot topic at the moment, what with Verizon's troubles in the USA (particularly in New York), and the German telecoms watchdog probing Deutsche Telecom over its high-speed Net access. It seems that the rollout of broadband internet connectivity is difficult to achieve whoever or wherever you are. Related Feature - AOL and Freeserve lambast BTOpenworld