[Wolves] BTfon - Can anyone make any sense of this announcement?

[Andy Wootton]

Peter Evans wrote:
> On Sunday 14 October 2007 20:09:09 Andy Wootton wrote:
> I will try hard not to come across as a troll here, but it appears there's 
> quite a bit of vitriol being posted and I'm not sure why...
>   
>> I'd be really excited about this if it was anyone but BT.
>>     
> Why is this such a concern?
>   
Pick from the following:

BT used their then monopoly position to hold back the introduction of 
ISDN then ADSL by several years in any area where they didn't have 
competitors because they could make more money out of leased lines.

Whenever I worked anywhere that uses BT lines, if there is a fault they 
first deny it, then run diagnostics and tell you there is nothing wrong 
so you aren't entitled to any refund then the line starts working. This 
takes slightly less than a day.

They are the only supplier of phone lines in my area and they only 
supply a service that includes call charges. I don't want to make any 
calls so I'm forced to pay for nothing. OFCOM has to take some of the 
blame for allowing them to get away with this.

I've spent about 5 hours on the phone over the last few weekends trying 
to get a phone line disconnected at my son's student house because one 
of his house-mates had ordered a service from Tiscali at the same time 
that we had asked for BT to enable the line. We cancelled the request 
the day before it was due to be switched on, 3 days after we had asked 
for it to be installed.

They refused for the whole of last year to connect a Demon ADSL service 
on a line that had been set to incoming calls only because the services 
are 'technically incompatible' but he had exactly that in his flat on 
campus the year before.
...

> Again, why are you worried if only BT is involved?  I don't see the same level 
> of concern about other partnerships being expressed, why this one?
>   
I had/have exactly the same concerns about IBM when they had a mainframe 
monopoly, Microsoft in software and Apple in Digital music

All of these companies may have reached their primary position by fair 
means but once they're there...

Suppliers in monopoly positions become Evil.