Ofcom will allow BT to sell cheap bundles
There may be good news on the front for BT customers as the largest phone company in the UK may soon have to reduce how much the company charges its 14 million landline customers for broadband and pay TV due to a watchdog ruling that is aimed at levelling the competitive playing field for telecom companies.
Ofcom, the telecoms regulator watchdog, lifted restrictions that it placed on BT telecoms when it was a private company in the 80?s that prevented the company from creating bundled package deals for broadband and line services at a discounted price.
The new change may mean that in the coming autumn for the first time BT can begin to offer package deals to consumers which rival companies have been able to do for years.
When the news was received, BT stocks immediately saw a jump of 4.4% which left the company as the largest riser reported on the FTSE 100 index.
BSkyB and Virgin Media have been packaging fixed line and broadband bundles which allows the companies to sell both services to customers at a reduced rate versus paying for the two services separately.
Due to the previous ruling which was aimed at preventing BT from getting a monopoly the company could only offer packages to customers that equalled the sum of what the two components would cost separately.
Since BT does not hold the same market power any longer Ofcom believes that it is now ok to create healthy competition among the competitors.
