Verwaayen also tried to persuade the committee that splitting BT's network operations from its retail side wasn't a blindingly bright idea. "This isn't the water industry, where there's just one product which is all one colour and only has one taste," said Verwaayen, illustrating the relative complexity of telecommunications. "If you separate the network from the product you're risking a nightmare situation," he added, defending the vertical integration so resented by many of BT's rivals. The problem facing BT, though, is that there seems to be quite a bit of support for the idea of breaking it up, even though broadband take-up is now growing rapidly. The legacy of all the mud thrown at the UK's incumbent telco by companies such as AOL, Cable & Wireless, ntl and Telewest is that some influential politicians believe that BT did act badly with regard to broadband, and they don't want to give it the chance to do it again. The select committee of Culture, Media and Sport, which produced a report into the Communications Bill last month, recommended that OFCOM should consider taking regulatory action against BT. The Rivals
Before it went head-to-head with Verwaayen, the joint committee into the Communications Bill heard evidence from some other telecommunications companies -- and asked them where they stood on the issue of breaking up BT. Telewest and ntl were reluctant to "put the ball in the back of the net" -- as one committee member put it -- and restricted themselves to demanding that OFCOM would come to its decisions rather faster than Oftel has managed. Cable & Wireless, though, were more vocal. "There needs to be a thorough, independent, evaluation of whether the UK's telecoms market is competitive. We think it isn't, and believe that the market would be much better off if BT's network was broken away from BT Retail," said Tom Philips of Cable & Wireless. The company said pretty much the same thing to the Culture, Media and Sport select committee when it appeared before them. Cable & Wireless are understood to believe they are winning support for their argument within political circles, but a BT insider was scathing about this, claiming that Cable & Wireless have made their claim so many times that they've managed to persuade themselves that they have won some support.
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