Ofcom proposes price freeze for business telecoms

REGULATOR Ofcom has proposed introducing controls which will freeze wholesale prices that BT charges for leased lines.

The move means that prices charged by providers of superfast broadband and mobile services to businesses should fall.

A Business Connectivity Market Review published by the regulator last month argued that BT has significant market power in a number of wholesale leased line services, and that charge controls should be imposed to protect purchasers.

It has now begun consultation over plans for setting new price control levels, which it said it expects “will lead to real-terms price reductions for most customers of the £2bn leased lines market, such as businesses, schools, universities and libraries”.

“Consumer mobile and broadband operators, which use leased lines to transfer data on their networks, would also see savings which could be passed on to customers.”

The proposed price controls involve capping existing charging levels (subject to inflation) until 2015.