If British Telecom (BT) own the phone lines, how can other Internet companies provide cheaper rates when they need to rent the line from BT? Location: UK
In: Other
BT is split up into different sections, which are supposed to run themselves independently. When BT want to provide a phone line etc to a customer, they have to “rent” the line from the part of the company which owns and maintains the lines, and a regulator tries to make sure that they don’t get preferential treatment, compared with Sky or Talk Talk or any other competitor. The regulator – and UK laws – have set up quite a detailed set of rules which mean that BT have to give a lot of access to their equipment and networks to the competitors, so that real competition can happen to benefit consumers.
This means that the competitors can set their pricing in the same way BT does, based on how much profit they need, any deals or combinations of services where the phone or broadband aspect can be part of an incentive to customers to buy their services, and so so.
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