Sky is pushing for BT to be ripped in two, after accusing its rival of failing to repair and install new broadband lines promptly. Sky wants Openreach - the division of BT that manages the broadband and telephone network - separated from BT Retail, to ensure that BT doesn't favour its own retail division when it comes to repairs.
Sky claims that Openreach misses more than 500 appointments a month to install new lines for Sky customers, and fails to complete a further 4,000 jobs per month, according to a report in the Financial Times. Sky also claims that fault rates across the Openreach network increased by half between 2009 and 2012 - the last year for which figures were made publicly available.
Sky claims that BT is underinvesting in Openreach and giving its own Retail division preferential treatment when it comes to repairs and installations, an accusation that BT has long denied. Sky wants Ofcom to force BT to spin-off Openreach, creating two different companies.
The proposal comes in Sky's formal submission to regulator Ofcom's regular review of the digital communications market. "We are drawing attention to the problems in broadband because they are important to the economy as a whole," Sky's chief strategy officer, Mai Fyfield, told the FT. "They affect competition between providers and have a direct impact on consumers and small businesses, resulting in inconvenience, dissatisfaction and loss of productivity."
Sky's intervention comes as BT faces enormous regulatory scrutiny, as it attempts to push through its £12 billion takeover of EE. That takeover is currently subject to an investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority, and has also raised concerns that BT will favour EE over other mobile providers by giving its own network cheaper access to the bandwidth required for mobile data services.
BT told the FT that it was "disappointing that Sky are engaging in selective spin rather than constructive dialogue", and that splitting Openreach from the rest of the company would "lead to huge uncertainty and fundamentally undermine the case for future investment".
