Sorry tale
Sir: Sonie who criticise British Telecom no doubt relish finding the faults they do because they disapprove in principle of privatised utilities. As an advocate of privatisation I am sorry to have to join thetn.
Recent personal experience includes cancelled installations, refusal to give esti- mated dates of installations, recommenda- tions of equipment immediately unsuitable for answering machines but, above all, staff who still talk like the worst sort of nationalised industry. One example: in areas of London there are companies which depend on the telephone for their business and which are moving offices. Because of the delay in telephone installa- tions they can find themselves having to maintain and pay for two sets of offices until installation takes place. British Tele- com staff seem neither to understand this nor prepared to do anything about it.
British Telecom plc, though no worse than its nationalised predecessor, has proved in my experience, and that of many of my friends who share my advocacy of privatisation, an uninspiring advertisement for the cause, What it needs, of course, is not letters of complaint in this or any other journal, let alone user bureaucracies, but the stern discipline of cut-throat competi- tion.
Digby C. Anderson
17 Hardwick Plane, Woburn Sands, Buckinghamshire.
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