BT facing multi-million pound wholesale net access lawsuit

The law suit is set to be filed by Network Systems (NSL), which has accused BT of mismanaging its ISPNet service and failing to deliver on the promise of 99.9 per cent reliability.

Tony McKenzie, managing director of NSL, alleges that BT has scuppered his ISP business.

In March this year, McKenzie ordered 50 lines, but he claims BT failed to deliver. He said: "They sold us a solution that should have been in place on 14 April and that system did not work until at least September."

He claims that 45 of the 50 lines were permanently engaged and those that did work dropped connection after around five minutes.

He said: "One of the things both the sales representative and documentation promised was that the system would be up for 99.9 per cent of the time. And we've not found that to be the case at all."

Despite the poor service, NSL was forced to pay £10,370 to BT or face all the lines it had leased being cut off within days.

McKenzie wrote to Oftel and BT's chairman Sir Iain Vallance in an attempt to have the issue addressed.

However BT's response was that it had no obligation to pay compensation. Three months down the line he is still waiting for a response from Oftel.

McKenzie is now determined to get his money back as well as gain compensation for seven months of lost ISP revenue, and has hired a computing expert to write up a technical report before issuing an official writ early next year.

BT acknowledges its legal team is dealing with the case but would not comment on specific details.

McKenzie claims even now his ISP business can't get up and running because BT announced in November that it plans to terminate its ISPNet product. But a spokesman for BT said all existing customers will continue to be supported.

NSL's case is similar to one bought against BT by ISP Zone Corporation in August, which attempted to sue the telco for £37m.