BT holds customers back after Oftel warning

NEWS BT has been warned by telecoms regulator, Oftel, to step up its administration efforts after it was accused of holding back customers who wanted to switch to its low cost rival, Localtel. But BT has told Localtel that its customers will have to wait until 6 June before it takes action. Localtel launched at the end of last month and offers UK customers cheap local calls and free off-peak Internet access through its service provider screaming.net, in partnership with high-street retailer, Tempo. But the company claims BT has caused unacceptable delays and it has received calls from thousands of anxious customers waiting to be transferred. Localtel offers its service by bulk buying network capacity from BT, which it then sells on to the customer at discounted prices. It had agreed with BT customers would have a maximum eight days waiting time to switch services, but many BT customers are being told it could take up to five weeks. BT admitted it was being slow but blamed Localtel for not giving accurate estimates. "The number of people was considerably in excess of the anticipated number that Localtel gave to us and as such there was a much higher volume of work involved than we had expected," a spokesman said. But Localtel denies the claims: "We have legal documents telling them that we expected to process between 2,000 and 2,500 new customers a day - we are actually getting between 1,000 and 3,000 a day. However, we have now been told by BT that it can only cope with 250 and that they can't do anything about it until 6 June because it takes that length of time to hire new staff to process the enquiries." A spokeswoman for Oftel commented: "We have discussed it with BT, who agreed it is taking too long, and said it would step up the process. But we will continue to monitor the situation."