Clause 34 - Fixing of charges
Communications Bill
11:30 am
Mr John Whittingdale (Maldon and East Chelmsford, Conservative)
Despite the fact that I am about to speak to a lot of amendments—23 in all—they all relate to a simple point, which deals with the provisions under clause 89 and Ofcom having the
power to determine that a supplier of apparatus has significant market power. I take apparatus to mean telephones or equipment that is plugged into the network. Not that long ago, there was significant market power in the supply of apparatus—indeed, there was one supplier of apparatus. That was in the days of nationalisation when BT, in a former incarnation, said that if we wanted a telephone, it would let us have one in six months' time and the telephone would be square and it would be black.
The world has moved on since then and, if we visited Dixons today, we would find a vast array of different types of telephone that can be plugged in. There would be different colours and shapes; some of the telephones would look like Mickey Mouse and others would be even more exotic. The one point that is fairly clear is that there is a fairly aggressive competitive market in the supply of apparatus.