SIR Peter Bonfield, chief executive of British Telecom, is demanding price cuts of up to 20 per cent from his equipment suppliers in the wake of last week’s proposed clampdown by the regulator Oftel. “A waste management plan is in the course of preparation and will be submitted to the Highland Regional Council.”He also played down suggestions that PIC was seeking public or European funds for the pounds 5m to pounds 7m project, other than local grants.”The company is not intending to make an application for EU funds and any local grant would be minimal and only in support of the creation of jobs in the locality,” he said.. A CONSORTIUM involving construction firms AMEC and Alfred McAlpine has won a pounds 200m contract to build two new road schemes in the second biggest award yet made under the government’s much-maligned private finance initiative (PFI). “That wind direction was taken from the airport at Inverness, 10 miles away. Up in the glens here you can have snow on the ground when there is none down there.”PIC claims the pig slurry will be good for the environment: “It will be injected into farmland and young forestry, so returning nutrients back to the ground for crop production,” a spokesman said. The animals will not see a single blade of grass.”Local people are annoyed by claims that the centre will boost the local economy.

Although the farm will employ 35 staff and create up to 30 jobs during the year-long construction phase, it is likely to kill off plans for a luxury hotel and golf course complex less than a mile downwind.In an statement to the local council, PIC argues that according to Met Office data, “Only in exceptional meteorological conditions will there be any risk of odour from the farm at the boundary of the site.”Colin Lamont, a local resident, disagrees. The Pig Improvement Company (PIC), a subsidiary of pet food giant Dalgety, is seekingplanning permission for a 60-acre site in woodland on the outskirts of Inverness that would house up to 24,000 breeding sows and 80 boars.
Objectors, who are demanding a full public inquiry, are concerned about the effects on the environment and the tourist industry of the smell, pollution and traffic from the farm.About five miles separate the site at Drummossie Muir from two of Scotland’s most famous landmarks: Loch Ness to the west and Culloden to the east, where Bonnie Prince Charlie fought his last battle in 1746.”People come to Scotland because it is a clean and pleasant land,” said Marilyn Shine, a campaigner against the farm “This will be an intensive indoor pig factory. “It’s a possibility, even if it’s quite a long way off at this point,” said one City analyst.. PLANS to build Britain’s biggest pig farm in the Scottish Highlands have alarmed local people, who are worried about living next door to the annual 50,000 tonnes of manure it would produce. It would be a no-lose move for BT, as the commission could only reduce Mr Cruickshank’s demands.If BT’s campaign against the regulator flags, it could follow another privatised utility, British Gas, down the path to demerger. That will automatically prompt an inquiry by the Monopolies and Mergers Commission, which will take up to six months to report. At present, he has the power to investigate cases of predatory pricing, but one industry insider said: “The best he can do amounts to little more than a rap over the knuckles.”BT’s first response to win back some of the lost ground will be to refuse to accept the report’s findings.

BT’s chairman, Sir Iain Vallance, has described the regulator as “prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner”.The next paper, Fair Trading in the Telecommunications Market, will set out Mr Cruickshank’s demand for the power to fine anti-competitive practices, and to call an instant halt to predatory pricing. “Until now there has been no real demand from service providers.”Sir Peter’s demands have partly been sparked by the tougher stance being taken by Don Cruickshank, director-general of Oftel. His latest consultative paper, published on Wednesday, called for customers to save 27 per cent on their bills – equivalent to pounds 80 a year off an average bill. “If we were starting out as a green-field business, we wouldn’t have some of the equipment that we do have.”David Yedwab, a telecoms consultant based in Parsippany, New Jersey, predicted that the first pieces of equipment designed for a standardised, open communications system will probably be available by the end of the decade, and a full set five years later, but he agreed that it will take much longer to replace established phone networks with a fully integrated system. “We’ve got a patchwork quilt of different technologies that we have to manage,” said Sir Peter. “We’re absolutely in sync with him on this,” said a company spokesman.The move shift should lead to more advanced equipment, although it takes far longer to introduce better gear into a tele- communications network than it does to replace a computer system. “We’ve told all our suppliers their product prices are out of line by 10 to 20 per cent.”Such cuts could be obtained if the industry were restructured in the way computers were in the early 1980s.

“We need more standardisation at the hardware level and more open systems,” he said. “Right now most of the equipment is proprietary.”Open systems were introduced when IBM decided to publish its specifications for PCs, allowing other manufacturers to clone the hardware under licence and encouraging programmers to write software that took full advantage of the design’s characteristics. As a result, PCs have swamped the market, threatening to sink Apple, which stuck to a proprietary system.Britain’s largest telecoms supplier, GPT, a joint venture between GEC and Germany’s Siemens, would not comment on Sir Peter’s call, but Northern Telecom, a Canadian manufacturer of switching equipment, said it has “very rapidly gotten engaged with his people to find ways to reduce BT’s costs”.The company agreed with his vision of the industry and said it was already moving in the direction of an open systems architecture. BT spends pounds 2.5bn a year on capital investment, much of it with equipment suppliers.
Sir Peter, who was drafted in from computer maker ICL in January, said at the weekend that the cost of telephone hardware has not fallen as fast as similar equipment in the computer sector. Hardware manufacturers such as GEC, Siemens and Northern Telecom could be badly squeezed, along with their components suppliers, and a tail of smaller equipment makers. The only reason you would use their service was to connect to a database, and at that time only science and medical databases were available.