Ref: 27/02
Date: 19 May 2002

A statement setting out the customer information and procedures BT can use to market its Internet services has been published today by Oftel.

The procedures will enable consumers to have easy access to information on what services are available to them and make clear how BT can market its services without acting anti-competitively.

BT cannot use detailed information contained in residential customers’ bills in order to target its Internet access services to particular customers, as no other operator has access to this information. Oftel is likely to view use of this information as anti-competitive.

BT sales staff will be subject to strict procedures to ensure that they comply with these rules. Oftel will closely monitor BT’s compliance, and will review the situation after six months.

BT is also allowed to use its residential ‘blue bill’ to charge for its new ‘BT Broadband’ service.

If at any time there are breaches in compliance then Oftel will consider invoking tougher procedures.

David Edmonds, Director General of Telecommunications, said:

"Internet services in the UK are now growing rapidly. There are around 600,000 users of broadband, and sales by BT, ntl and Telewest are running at around 20,000 per week.

"Narrowband services also continue to grow: four million UK consumers are using unmetered access packages.

"Oftel wants to see fair competition across the market. This means that BT’s competitors must be sure that BT is complying with competition law and its licence.

"We have published clear procedures on BT’s marketing of Internet services and use of joint billing to ensure BT does not act anti-competitively.

"BT must not use billing information from its telephony customers to target its marketing of Internet services to residential consumers.

"Other operators and ISPs do not have access to this extensive and detailed information, and it would give BT an unfair marketing advantage to use residential billing information.

"BT can market Internet services on a generic basis, for example by including information about a new product with everyone’s bill. And like other companies, BT can conduct market research among its customer base or buy in market research in order to make its marketing more effective.

"BT sales staff will be subject to strict procedures to ensure that they comply with these rules. Oftel will closely monitor BT’s compliance and will introduce tougher procedures if necessary.

"Both BT and other operators will be clear about what is permissible and Oftel will review the results after six months."

Notes to editors

1 Statement on BT’s marketing of Internet services and use of joint billing is published on Oftel’s website at www.oftel.gov.uk/publications/ind_guidelines/mark0502.htm.

2. The main elements of the compliance regime governing the application of these policies:

• General BT call centre advisers on retail channels such as 150 are allowed promote and sell BT Internet Service Provision services on in-bound and out-bound calls.
• BT call centre advisers must stick to Oftel approved prompts and scripts to prevent potentially anti-competitive mis-use of customer information.
• Mystery shopping of conversations by call centre staff will take place to ensure that they are compliant with marketing rules. This will be conducted by the third party company that conducts BT’s internal mystery shopping exercises.
• Oftel will have direct access to the findings, questions and terms of reference of this mystery shopping.
• Oftel will also conduct a smaller scale mystery shopping exercise to act as a control on the results provided by BT. It would welcome sight of similar exercises carried out on behalf of third parties.

3. Oftel will keep both the content and the implementation of the approach described in this document under active review. If BT does not comply with the terms of this regime (either deliberately or inadvertently) Oftel reserves the right to put in place more intrusive measures to protect consumers from the threat of anti-competitive behaviour. Oftel will formally review this approach no later than six months time (November 2002).