Oftel eases way for long-distance carrier choice

Oftel has called for the introduction of carrier pre-selection (CPS), the system which will allow phone users to bypass BT when making national and international calls.

The telecoms watchdog released a consultative document on Monday, which will lead to BT and Hull-based Kingston Communications dropping their current practice of making residential phone users and some small businesses dial a number prefixes before using alternative carriers.

Robin Duke-Woolley, principal consultant at Schema, commented: "This is good news for other operators. Pre-selection has been a problem." However, he said a lot of businesses are unlikely to be affected, because they can set their Private Branch Exchanges to the cheapest route.

A BT spokesman said: "The decision is no surprise. We've been expecting this for months if not years. It's wrong to say we've been fighting against it."

AT&T and other carriers in the UK have long called for CPS in the UK. In the US, carriers select a long-distance carrier such as AT&T, Sprint or WorldCom, and then receive a bill direct from that company. In countries such as Australia and Finland, long-distance carriers are decided according to customer votes or through statistical calculations.

Robert Hall, manager of Ovum's Competition and Regulation Group, said: "This is quite significant. It is a major change from Oftel's previous policy of encouraging network infrastructure building."