France Telecom, along with others, has petitioned Ofcom to force BT to drop unbundling prices to bring them in line with those of the rest of Europe.
In June, BT agreed with Ofcom to do just this, and Sichel said that he is now 'happy with our relationship with BT'.
Yet the regulator has played a canny game with LLU to date. When broadband first surfaced in 2000, the then regulator Oftel looked to local loop unbundling as the 'key initiative to bring competition into the BT network for broadband services.' Yet in 2003, the FT reported Oftel describing LLU as nothing more than a 'niche area' that was contrived to 'produce a competitive threat' to BT to hasten its own broadband rollout.
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