This is big news; we are told that this £42m fine is the largest penalty ever imposed by the regulator. And it makes total sense following last week’s enforcement of the BT/Openreach split.

Openreach’s CEO, Clive Selley fully accepts they are at fault. In a statement issued today he said; “This shouldn’t have happened, we fully accept Ofcom’s findings, and we apologise wholeheartedly for the mistakes we have made in the past.”

£300m is also being paid in compensation to rivals TalkTalk and Vodafone as apparently Openreach put them at a disadvantage by deliberately delaying installations and service. In fact, it has been alleged that if you had contacted BT directly for a service to be put into an office or home, it would have happened in half the time than if you went via other providers.

From our point of view, we have long been aware that you need to micro-manage the order process with Openreach. Which is why we have set our business up accordingly to minimise the risk of customers’ orders getting delayed.

We are waiting to hear whether we and the other service providers get a share of the compensation…or is it all going to the big guys Vodafone and TalkTalk? After all, we have all had to bear the brunt of BT’s collusion with Openreach. And we could use any compensation to great effect by investing in improvements for our customers’ benefit.

Clive Selley has promised huge improvements; “I have every confidence that Kevin and the team will continue to make improvements and make sure the mistakes of the past aren’t repeated in future.”

Until then, we will continue to use our 20+ years of experience in the industry to make sure that we can navigate the icebergs that these main rivals cannot, and whilst they spend a day in the press arranging their deck chairs, we at 2 Circles will get on with the task of super connecting businesses in the UK.