More and more people are turning to broadband

The telecommunications watchdog investigated BT's high-speed net services following a complaint by Freeserve.

The rival net service provider alleged that BT was using its dominance to help sell its own brand of high-speed services.

But after investigating the complaint Oftel has concluded that BT is not abusing its position or breaking competition laws.

'Little benefit'

In its complaint Freeserve alleged that BT was acting anti-competitively by using other parts of its business to push broadband services.

It alleged that BT was not playing fair by linking broadband to other telephony services such as giving people the chance to get one bill for both net and voice services.

It also alleged that BT was acting unfairly by offering broadband to people calling its 150 customer helpline number and by promoting its own fast net services on phone bills.

In its ruling, Oftel said that the number of customers BT managed to attract by using 150 to promote broadband was so low that it could not have skewed the market for high-speed services.

It also said that there was little advantage to BT offering a single bill service because this could easily be replicated by net service providers letting people pay with a credit card or direct debit.

Finally, Oftel said that BT got little benefit from promoting broadband via blue phone bills.

It said that rival net firms were likely to get a better response if they used direct mail to reach these potential customers.

Oftel is also conducting a separate investigation into the price BT charges for broadband following the ruling of the Competition Appeals Tribunal in April this year.