Sensitive incentive
Communications regulator Ofcom has announced it has proposed BT Wholesale should reduce its prices for rural broadband by between 10.75% and 14.75% below inflation. With inflation running at 3.7 percent, this will hopefully mean third party ISPs will be charged around ten percent less, and pass that onto customers.
Ofcom speculated that the proposed price reductions will not only increase broadband competition in rural areas, but might also improve the quality as ISPs will be able to allocate more bandwidth per customer. Alternatively they could just trouser the difference. Where there is already local loop unbundling, Ofcom isn't currently proposing any forced pricing changes.
There's a lovely turn of phrase in the press release: "Ofcom's aim is to incentivise BT Wholesale to continue to improve its efficiency." Doubtless BT Wholesale is grateful for this extra incentive. The press release also claimed to come with a map of the affected areas attached, but there's no sign of one. As soon as Ofcom's PR people clock in for the day we'll update the story with it.
The changes are expected to come into effect in the summer.
In other news, BT has announced the release of a new iPad app that it claims expands its ‘free' Wi-Fi access. As ever, there's rather a big caveat attached to that ‘free' claim, in this case you already have to be a paying BT home broadband customer.
"Our free app for the iPhone and Android devices has proved a huge hit with over 400,000 downloads to date, so launching an app for the iPad was naturally the next step," said John Petter, BT Retail Consumer MD. "The app makes accessing wi-fi so simple you don't even have to think about it and represents real value to our customers at a time when more and more people are accessing the internet when they are on the move."
You can find out more about the new app here.
UPDATE - 11:30 20/1/11 - Here's the promised map:
