The campaign was started by the rivals to drive public responses to Ofcom's consultation on increased separation of BT and its wholesale arm Openreach. As the largest customers of Openreach's wholesale services for access to the BT network, the ISPs have been pushing for greater separation of BT's retail and wholesale arms and increased network investment.
BT asked the operators to change a number of the claims in the campaign, but the three rivals have refuted in detail BT's allegations in their own letter back to Patterson. The claims point to BT's growing spending on sports rights while broadband investment at Openreach is largely flat in recent years; the slower services resulting from BT's decision to invest in copper hybrid technology like FTTC rather than pure fibre; and the poor availability of faster broadband in parts of the country and limited investment in network maintenance.
The three operators said the statements are all based on public information from Ofcom and BT and "we do not therefore consider that any of them are misleading". Their response was also CC'd to Ofcom and the state secretary for telecom issues.
