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The first stage of the Channel Islands Competition and Regulatory Authorities review of business lines has concluded that JT’s dominance in the local market is limiting customer choice.
It has now come forward with proposals to remedy the States-owned telecoms provider’s “significant market power” in both the local retail and wholesale leased lines markets.
Channel Islands Competition and Regulatory Authorities (CICRA) interim chief executive, Michael Byrne, said: “After gathering opinion we have now published our proposals for the next stage of the review identifying what we have assessed, the conclusions we have drawn and what we will review in the next stage. Our findings are the first step to improving the ability of operators to be able to offer alternative business connectivity options in the Channel Islands.”
The authority has launched the second phase of the review, with the main focus on how “leased lines” are sold to businesses. These lines, which (CICRA) describes as “the essential building blocks for secure, dedicated data connections for businesses”, are private phone and data lines between offices in the Island and outside, to other locations.
The second part of the review is open to consultation until 2 June. It put forwards proposals to rectify the imbalance of provision in the retail leased lines and the wholesale leased lines in the Island caused by JT’s market dominance. CICRA’s proposals include relying on remedies in the wholesale market to address competition, intervening to comply JT to cut its prices or implement a broad range of remedies to control access, cost, accounting and prices.
CICRA says it sees no reason to intervene in the provision of sufficient lines out of the Island as there was competition between three suppliers, JT, Newtel and Sure.
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