The Competition Appeal Tribunal yesterday upheld a notification by legacy telecoms regulator Oftel which found that BT had misused customer-specific information to try and prevent customers from transferring to competing communications providers.

The ruling concerned BT�s �save activity� which is understood to have included BT�s marketing team calling customers who wished to leave BT and attempting to persuade them to stay with BT rather than switch to an alternative provider. Carrier-pre-selection providers disclosed to BT details of their new customers to enable the transfer of those customers from BT. BT then passed-on this information to its marketing team which made �save calls� to those customers. The Oftel notification from November 2003, now upheld by the Competition Appeal Tribunal, found that such �save activity� is in contravention of General Condition 1.2 of the General Conditions of Entitlement made under the Communications Act 2003.

General Condition 1.2 prohibits a communications provider from using information acquired in confidence from another communications provider in the process of negotiating �network access�, for any other purpose but the one for which the information was supplied. The prohibition specifically bans the passing of the information by the acquiring communications provider to any other party, including to internal departments and subsidiaries (e.g. the provider�s marketing department), for whom such information could provide a competitive advantage.

Amit Rainhartz