Deacon takes on BT over lost phone line with £500 compensation claim

Shona Alexander, chief cxecutive of the Citizens Advice Bureau, Newcastle A DEACON who has claimed £500 compensation from BT says he is not surprised they were fined by the telecom regulator.

Rev Stephen Boulter, the new deacon at a Catholic church at Bedlington, asked for our help last week when BT connected his personal number but cut off the office.

Attempts to get it back on proved futile until we contacted the company.

It also seemed as if St Bede’s would lose the number it had used for 40 years but it was eventually restored.

Now Rev Boulter is looking for a considerable offer from BT.

He said: “I have just seen the BBC evening news about people like me having problems with internet and phone lines and compensation pro- posals. Looks like I was bang on the money in claiming £500.”

Ofcom, the industry regulator, fined BT £42m for what they called a serious breach of Ofcom’s rules by BT’s Openreach division which looks after the infrastructure of the network.

It comes after the company reduced compensation payments to other telecoms providers - which use their network of lines - for late installations.

Ofcom was also worried about BT not playing fair with other providers.

Gaucho Rasmussen, Ofcom’s Investigations Director, said: “These high-speed lines are a vital part of this country’s digital backbone.

“Millions of people rely on BT’s network for the phone and broadband services they use every day. We found BT broke our rules by failing to pay other telecoms companies proper compensation when these services were not provided on time.

“The size of our fine reflects how important these rules are to protect competition and, ultimately, consumers and businesses.

“Our message is clear – we will not tolerate this sort of behaviour.”

BT will also be fined £300,000 for failing to provide information to Ofcom.

Chief executive Gavin Patterson said Ofcom’s investigation “revealed we fell short of the high standards” for serving telecoms providers.

“We take this issue very seriously and we have put in place measures, controls and people to prevent it happening again,” he said.