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BT cuts broadband charges by up to 25%

Elizabeth Skerritt
Thursday 01 July 2004 00:00 BST
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BT, the telecoms giant, further fuelled the broadband price war yesterday by cutting mon-thly subscription charges by up to 25 per cent. The cost of its most expensive package, BT Yahoo! Broadband 1Mb, will fall from £40.99 to £29.99, undercutting an equivalent product by Wanadoo priced at £34.99.

BT, the telecoms giant, further fuelled the broadband price war yesterday by cutting mon-thly subscription charges by up to 25 per cent. The cost of its most expensive package, BT Yahoo! Broadband 1Mb, will fall from £40.99 to £29.99, undercutting an equivalent product by Wanadoo priced at £34.99.

A spokesman for BT said: "It is fair to say this is in reaction to the amount of competition out there".

In May BT was offering a free flight for anyone signing up its broadband services which it says resulted in "a significant uplift in subscribers". This latest round of price cuts continue BT's drive to sign up 5 million subscribers by 2005. It currently has just over 1 million subscribers to broadband.

Duncan Ingram, director of BT Openworld, said: "The 1Mb package is very good value, from a name you can trust", adding that revenue losses from reducing the monthly charges would be offset by a higher volume of customers.

In an announcement yesterday, Wanadoo said that following the launch of its £17.99-a- month 512k service two months ago, between 12,000 and 15,000 customers had been signing up each week. Notably, this offers 2GB of usage allowance per month compared with 1GB for the basic packages of BT and other competitors. The price for BT's similar Broadband Basic package, which in March was reduced to £19.99 a month, remains the same.

Mr Ingram stressed that BT's aim was to provide an "attractive and competitive service which includes quality content and applications. 1Mb is very adequate for the purposes of downloading music, gaming and for multiple home computers."

BT has seen its share of the retail broadband market fall to 42 per cent from 52 per cent over the last year.

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