Jackie Danicki

Michael Jennings explains why the formerly nationalised British Telecom is such a pain in the backside here:

Yes, well, BT should have been broken up into a number of pieces prior to privatisation and then the pieces should have been allowed to compete with each other. However like with most British privatisations, the Treasury figured out that it could get a lot more money from selling companies in quasi-monopolistic industries than genuinely competitive ones, so BT was sold in one piece and a regulator set up to promote competition.

Of course, remarkably, Britain then went on to become perhaps the most competitive telecommunications market in the world. This was largely *because* of BT’s incompetence. In most similar markets the former incumbent has remained dominant in new parts of the market - usually with 50% or more of the cellular and ISP markets. BT has totally failed to manage this (it has around 25% of the ISP market and after selling O2 has 0% of the mobile market in network terms and a couple of percent if you count its MVNO).

…I could now theoretically buy my line rental from a company that is not BT, but that would just amount to somebody else doing the billing on behalf of BT and BT providing the service, and that would just give BT someone to blame if anything went wrong. If I lived in a more prosperous area I would have a choice of companies that had unbundled the local loop at my exchange, and I could genuinely buy the service from someone else.

That BT Global Services has hired JP Rangaswami as its CIO does give me hope, but I don’t suppose BT Global Services has a whole lot to do with the crappy service BT home customers receive. (If I am wrong, I am sure Michael will enlighten me.)

Filed under: Business, Life, Technology, The State Is Not Your Friend, Treating Customers Well