ST Friaco, patron saint of fiasco

Who'd be a regulator? Being an incumbent telco is bad enough, but at least you get paid handsomely for it. But now the DSL fiasco is one step away from the courts, it looks like Oftel is winding up for another sorry chapter in the sad tale of the local loop droop.

ST Friaco, known to devotees as Single Tandem Flat Rate Internet Access Call Origination, is the latest ruling from Oftel for unbundling the local loop. It allows ISPs to use BT's network to connect them all the way from their own networks to a customer's phone socket, all for a fixed monthly price. ST Friaco is massively, horrifically, excessively late. But we'll forgive that, because there's an even bigger problem - it's almost certain to be ineffective. BT has proved time and again that it doesn't like unbundling. It will try to wring cash from the local loop for as long as it can, using its position to sell its strange and complicated range of products. Only the toughest of tough regulation will get in its way. AOL and Freeserve are already warming up the men in wigs to get BT for obstructive DSL tactics. And who wouldn't? They're only getting 100 DSL customers connected every week, while BT connects 2000 for its OpenWorld service. BT did produce a complicated justification for this, which we didn't really understand and we won't repeat here. The point is simply this - the company has what police would call 'a bit of previous'. Now, Oftel is going to require BT to give its competitors capacity for the end-to-end connection of internet users. BT has said that because people with unmetered internet access tend to surf the web quite a bit, they won't be able to meet "all reasonable requests" until 2003. The regulatory documents are long and detailed, but there are enough loopholes in the press release alone for two years' worth of happy and lucrative BT dithering. Only ironhanded regulation will stop BT fooling around on this. Oftel is behaving like Judge Fudge when the situation calls for Judge Dredd. Until Oftel does more than lightly tell BT off, the UK has as much chance of becoming a thriving ebusiness hub as Sir Peter Bonfield has of becoming patron saint of the internet.