A report commissioned by the BBC to examine the market impact of its controversial proposal to launch a £170m digital learning initiative has been heavily criticised by independent consultants.
The PriceWaterhouseCoopers report, released by the BBC to assuage private sector fears that they would be frozen out of the government's planned Curriculum Online initiative, is "fundamentally flawed", according to National Economic Research Associates.
And another study, published on Sunday by strategic consultancy SRU, suggests that media companies such as Granada, Channel 4, Pearson, Reed Elsevier and the Gaurdian's Learnthings Ltd stand to lose up to £400m if the BBC is allowed to use licence fee payers' money to provide schools with free digital resources.
The BBC is seeking government permission to use up to £170m of licence fee cash to subsidise its contribution to Curriculum Online - a government initiative launched in 2001 - enraging educational suppliers in the private sector who fear it will distort the market.
The Nera report, commissioned by the Digital Learning Alliance - a consortium of companies in the private sector - claims that PriceWaterhouseCoopers failed to fully acknowledge that the BBC would supply its services for free and as such "cannot be fully credible because it sidesteps the main issue".
Nera says PriceWaterhouseCoopers was told by the corporation "not to seek information from any of the private firms currently supplying information for the market for educational content, including online software".
It also suggests the consultants ignored the main issue of public subsidy when drawing up their report, where "the main threat to private sector firms, and hence to competition, comes from a public organisation using licence fee income to provide products and services that are free to consumers".
The flurry of claims and counter claims are part of a consultation period on the BBC proposals currently being led by the culture secretary, Tessa Jowell, which ends on July 22.
The BBC has also been criticised by educational software provider RM, which is leading a group of 18 educational publishers in a court action against the corporation over the proposals.
A spokeswoman for the corporation said: "We haven't yet seen the report so can't comment in detail but we have consulted widely in framing our proposition."
