Andy Green, chief executive of BT Openworld told Reuters that the ISP was connecting between 1000 and 2000 customers a week to its service. In contrast, AOL and Freeserve are only being allocated 100 installation slots per week each by BT Ignite and are outraged that BT appears to be unlawfully abusing it market position in favour of its own division.
In its defence, a BT spokesman said that the allocation of ADSL is “transparent, fair and equitable” and that all ISPs are getting approximately 40% of their orders. BT claims that it has marketed ADSL much harder and more successfully than other ISPs and the only reason AOL and Freeserve are not getting the same number of installations as BT Openworld is that they are not placing as many orders.
Both AOL and Freeserve are demanding that BT clarify the DSL installation figures and that Oftel investigate the matter immediately and are threatening legal action if the problems cannot be resolved.