By Sabah Meddings For The Daily Mail Published: 16:56 EDT, 26 September 2016 | Updated: 16:56 EDT, 26 September 2016 BT could be forced to spend up to £15million after claims it ripped-off rivals by charging too much for fixing faulty broadband lines. The payout follows a row between the telecoms giant and Talk Talk and Sky, who both allege BT has been overcharging them for years for sending out engineers on their behalf. The allegations relate to Opnereach, the BT division which looks after Britain's poles and cables, and date back more than seven years, according to Talk Talk. Overcharging allegations: Opnereach is the BT division which looks after Britain's poles and cables It claims a 'conservative' estimate of the overcharging is £15million. BT believes the figure is closer to £5million. An investigation by industry watchdog Ofcom has agreed BT Openreach had charged too much. An Ofcom report said: 'BT does appear to be billing more than the actual time worked by its engineers, which suggests there is a risk of cost over-recovery as a result of its billing approach.' An Openreach spokesman said: 'These are provisional findings relating to a detailed and complex pricing issue,' 'Openreach followed Ofcom's guidelines to set these prices so we're disappointed that the way in which Ofcom has assessed this case differs from our understanding of that guidance.' Talk Talk said the engineering call outs took place between 2009 and 2014, and could have driven up broadband bills. A spokesman said: 'Although not all engineering charges are passed on to consumers, a good proportion of this overpayment will have been borne by customers unnecessarily. 'To make matters worse, these services mostly affect non-BT customers – most of the time, BT Retail uses completely different engineering services.' And Talk Talk criticised the delay in recovering the extra costs: 'Even though the overcharging dates back to 2009, Ofcom has decided that the repayment won't take place until BT's appeal in another overpayment case is heard which will be next spring at the very earliest. 'These kind of delays show why Ofcom's current appeals system is completely broken.' Ofcom would not put a figure on the amount BT may have to repay. Sky did not comment. Advertisement Some links in this article may be affiliate links. If you click on them we may earn a small commission. That helps us fund This Is Money, and keep it free to use. We do not write articles to promote products. We do not allow any commercial relationship to affect our editorial independence.
Telecoms regulator Ofcom has ruled in favour of TalkTalk and Sky, who alleged that BT overcharged them for fixing faulty lines, and could be forced to pay out between £5m and £15m. The incidents date from 2009 and 2014. An Ofcom spokesperson said: "'BT does appear to be billing more than the actual time worked by its engineers, which suggests there is a risk of cost over-recovery as a result of its billing approach." In an interview with BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Mr Hunt said he was "disappointed" at BT's decision but added it would not affect his plans to reform telecoms.