BT Ireland CEO claims Eircom is damaging competition

According to a report appearing in the Irish Times, BT Ireland’s chief executive Chris Clark has claimed that Eircom is damaging the competitiveness of the Irish telecoms market by mounting legal challenges to decisions of the regulator ComReg. The CEO said that Eircom is using ‘every technique in the book’ to block ComReg’s ruling last year which forced the incumbent telco to cut the wholesale price of broadband lines, before adding that just 3.4% of DSL-based broadband subscriptions in Ireland are provided using local loop unbundling (LLU) as opposed to as many as 30% in other European countries. ‘There are a number of arguments put forward about the geography of the country not making it economical to invest. That’s absolutely not the case. The reason is that Eircom’s price for LLU is not economic,’ he stated.