Industry regulator Ofcom plans to limit wholesale charges levied by BT on large organisations and mobile and broadband operators which use the nationwide cable network to send larges amount of data. The plans are open to consultation until the end of August.
BT is expected to contest the proposals, which would impact significantly on its revenues, however Elite Telecom, one of the UK’s top unified communications providers to business, has welcomed the move, saying it offers new opportunities for competition, innovation and pricing across the market.
Alex Cliffe, operations director at Elite Telecom, says: “For the 4.5 million UK businesses relying on data connectivity services every day, there are tangible benefits to Ofcom’s proposal, not least in the potential to cut costs and increase the quality of their overall communications set-up.
“Mobile and broadband operators using leased lines to transfer data on their networks will hopefully pass on those cost savings to customers, who can include anything from schools and universities to charities and banks.
“Meanwhile, the reduction in wholesale prices will inevitably attract new entrants to join the data connectivity market, thereby increasing the level of technology innovation and reducing end user prices even further.
“Organisations which would have traditionally chosen a service based solely on price, perhaps opting for a low cost DSL connection, may now select a high quality fibre line connection, putting a premium service within closer reach of SMEs.
“An improved user experience also reflects well on the communications industry, allowing operators such as ourselves to capitalise on that goodwill by offering additional hosted telephony and cloud-based services to commercial customers.”
Elite Telecom’s extensive product portfolio incorporates a wide range of business telephone solutions, such as call recording software and business phone systems, in both hosted and traditional hardware formats. Other products include Elite Card Guard, which adheres to PCI compliance standards, and its intelligent call queuing system, Elite IQ.