However, the industry also has an important role to play. Operators are free to introduce new retail tariff structures, but in some circumstances this may be difficult with the current structure of interconnect charges. If negotiations fail, and Oftel considers the request to be reasonable, Oftel can intervene and determine a tariff on the basis of the new tariff structure. Line charges are below cost and the loss is made up from profits on calls. In the main this does not matter greatly for telecoms users, since most users pay total charges which broadly relate to the total costs they impose on the system, and very high users are usually able to obtain services from competing operators.
Internet usage creates a new problem.
The structure of telecoms tariffs penalises those who use the Internet a lot by making them pay total charges which are in excess of the total costs of providing service to them. Competition does not help to solve this problem for many Internet users, as they tend to have no option other than to use the BT network for call origination. In the past the NTS system tied the charge for a call to an ISP to an operator's local call charge. It also limited BT's retention for originating an NTS call to an ISP to a wholesale charge of 1-1.2ppm. The difference between the local call charge to users and BT's retention has been shared between terminating operators and ISPs.