Morning Edition: Bad day for BT, new dog old tricks and laughing at Apple

NEWS BT's main competitors have presented Patricia Hewitt, the UK e-minister, with an ultimatum following a statement she made in support of Oftel and the current unbundling process timetable. Senior managers from six of BT's leading competitors told Hewitt that if she failed to impose changes upon BT and Oftel, they would go public with their campaign and have also threatened to pursue legal action... The Telegraph also rubs salt in the wounds of the UK telco with news that BT and the other shareholders of Italian mobile group Blu were last faced with the possibility of missing out on a lucrative third generation mobile licence. The shareholders are locked in talks that if unresolved may see Blu withdraw from the auction, paving the way for the remaining candidates to take up the quota of licences as the bidding group is now only one greater than the number of available licences... Further news from the Telegraph brings word of a service being launched on the internet today. Visitors to Questico, who do not want to endure the hardships of trawling through web pages for information will be able to connect to a real person via a telephone. Available to speak to are experts in a variety of fields whose qualifications and contact numbers will be displayed on the site. All they need to do now is put all the names and numbers in a big yellow book and we're back to where we were ten years ago. The only difference to traditional services seems to be the price. Calls are charged at 60p per minute with the experts levying a further fee, in some cases as much as £3 per minute, for their services... The final word goes to stand-up comedian Phil Jupitus who tells this morning's Independent that there is about half an hour of material in new routine that is inspired by his Mac iBook. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is not explicit, for while Jupitus praises the capabilities of the machine I'm sure it was not designed to be laughed at. Others may even go so far as to say that owning up to half an hour of computer-based humour is possibly not the best way to sell tickets...