British Telecommunications Plc yesterday came out fighting in its we are more liberal than what you are playground war of words with AT&T Co, saying that opposition to its application to offer services in the US attempts to exploit regulatory procedures and distort the issues in order to delay the application, Reuter reports from Washington. Opponents of our efforts are attempting to deny customers in the US the benefits of competition that a strong and experienced global competitor would bring to the marketplace, company vice-president of government relations Jim Graf said. British Telecom wants to set up a global framework which can offer a complete telecommunications service package to multinationals by reselling spare capacity on the international private line circuits of other US carriers. Jonathan Rickford, British Telecom’s director of government relations, said in a telephone briefing from Washington, There has to be a little give and take… there’s no reason we can’t resolve the whole thing. Rickford attacked what he described as the hysteria of the opposition to BT: the fear is that the US is being opened up to a conspiracy of foreigners against which the US needs to defend itself. The UK and US markets were the two most open in the world and regulators and phone companies could not allow emotive objections to block increased competition. Graf’s statement said BT’s opponents had tried to impose impossible standards of market reciprocity between the US and UK.
Unrealistic
But the Federal Communications Commission has recognised that mirror equivalence is an entirely unrealistic standard because telecommunications systems, markets and regulatory regimes are constantly evolving and cannot be identical. He pointed out that the FCC has a policy of broad equivalence for markets, taking as factors open entry and even-handedness with competitors. BT strongly believes that the UK market meets the standard on all these criteria and that the UK government, like the US government, is firmly committed to open markets and competition. BT North America’s proposed services are in the public interest and none of the arguments justify delaying or denying approval, said Graf. The clash is expected to be resolved via government pressure and the spat is more sound than substance, say analysts.
