UK ISP Freeserve has succeeded in its appeal against a previous Oftel ruling, which had seen the regulator investigate BTs broadband ADSL products for anti-competitive behaviour and fail to find any.

The Competition Appeals Tribunal (CAT) granted Freeserve's appeal, which will now force Oftel to reinvestigate at least one part of the complaint:

Freeserve originally asked Oftel, the telecoms regulator, to look into the promotion of the telco's "no frills" product, BT Broadband, in March 2002 but the telecoms regulator dismissed the case.

Freeserve appealed to the CAT, which has ruled that Oftel must look again at one aspect of Freeserve's complaint, related to predatory pricing, in the next three months.

Interestingly there were originally four areas of contention, which Oftel highlights as follows:

* cross marketing between BT and BT Openworld;
* BT Openworld having advance notification of BT Wholesale price reductions;
* predatory pricing by BT in the broadband sector; and
* BT using its telephone census to the benefit of BT Openworld.

Out of those four only one, predatory pricing, has been upheld in Freeserve's favour. Interestingly Oftel's own press release barely even mentions this, yet unsurprisingly Freeserve talks it up.

The question on everybody’s lips is whether or not a new investigation would find anything new. More @ ZDNet.