BT WAS warned yesterday that it would face strong resistance if it followed its American counterparts and charged internet companies for downloads by consumers

US telecoms giants, including BellSouth and Verizon Communications, want to levy fees on internet services such as Google for broadband delivery of music and film downloads as well as other “bandwidth-heavy” applications over their telephone networks.

In an aggressive move against their rivals, American telecoms groups have complained to regulators that internet services are taking up valuable capacity on the network, which is out of proportion to the money they pay.

They have also complained that such services are not paying enough towards the upkeep of the network. In Britain, BT is spending billions to upgrade its network for broadband use.

Ivan Seidenberg, head of Verizon Communications, said: “We have to make sure they don’t sit on our network and chew up our capacity.”

The US telecoms firms have argued that internet services should pay for priority access to the network, with non-payers receiving a lower priority — effectively creating a two-tier system.

The move was interpreted by analysts as an aggressive bid by the established telecoms companies to defend their territory against the growing number of new companies that are eating into their revenues.

BT insisted yesterday that it had no plans to lobby for the same two-tier system. A spokesman for the group said: “At the moment this is not something we are looking into.”

However, the group conceded that the issues raised constituted an “interesting debate” and it did not rule out raising such issues in the future.

British internet companies said that consumers would ultimately pay the price for such a system, with higher charges being passed on to users.

Kerry Ritz, managing director of Vonage UK, the internet phone company, said: “Customers are already paying for their broadband subscription. Maybe the phone companies feel there is an opportunity to squeeze some more money out of other organisations but it would be a very dangerous move.”

Like its US counterparts, BT is facing fierce competition from a raft of new companies offering broadband services. Companies such as Vonage and Skype are shaking up the traditional telecoms market by offering free telephone calls over the internet.

Julian Hewett, an analyst at Ovum, the telecoms consultancy, said: “It sounds like a very backward step to seek to charge for such services.

“These kinds of applications like free internet calls are the kind of attractive things that encourage people to go and buy broadband off people like BT in the first place.”

BILLIONS SPENT ON BROADBAND

BT is set to spend up to £10 billion building its next-generation network to enable it and its competitors to deliver services such as TV-on-demand faster

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