By Tony Hallett, 7 July 1998 08:19
NEWS London Electricity is offering telecoms services to its 1.8 million customers, through a partnership with ACC Telecom. The move comes on the eve of the deregulation of the electricity industry, and is an attempt to deter the company's existing customers from turning to suppliers outside the capital. According to London Electricity, residential and business customers signing up to the service will save an average of 20 per cent on regional and national calls, and 5 per cent on local calls compared with BT prices. As with long-distance services offered by AT&T and others, users will have to dial a prefix before making calls. Nigel Deighton, research director at Gartner Group, said: "London Electricity is an interesting case, because they've been offering call centre services for some time to third parties. In general, power and railway companies make attractive partners for telcos looking to expand outside of their home markets, and I'm sure we'll see more deals like this." Cross-industry tie-ups are becoming common - for example, British Gas is supplying electricity and London Electricity is selling certain types of insurance - which means that traditional providers must fight to defend their customer base. Deighton said older telcos are "probably quite shell-shocked by now" due to the rise of voice over IP, the prospect of voice and data services being sent over electricity lines, and competition from power companies.
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