BT Scotland story

BT Scotland strategy

BT is much more than just the provider of telecommunications networks and services in Scotland. BT Scotland was created in 1998 in response to Scottish devolution and in the years since we have become an innovative and dynamic company competing in the converged markets of computing, IT and communications.

The company operates offices in the four main cities in Scotland - Alexander Bain House in Glasgow, Alexander Graham Bell House in Edinburgh, New Telecom House in Aberdeen and Telephone House in Dundee.

Our strategy is to meet Scotland’s demand for IT infrastructure and solutions and facilitate the expansion of broadband, while continuing to deliver in our traditional areas of service.

We help customers make the most of the convergence of networks and services, mobile and fixed products, media and communications.

This places BT Scotland at the heart of Scotland, forging connections across all aspects of public and private life.

BT’s infrastructure is also a strength behind many other companies which provide telephony and internet services in Scotland.

More than 400 UK communications providers use BT’s wholesale networks to deliver services, encouraging choice, innovation and a fair deal for consumers.

This makes Scotland part of the most competitive broadband market in the world.

Our impact

BT contributes £789 million in Gross Value Add to the Scottish economy – equivalent to 0.7 per cent of Scottish GVA.

It has more than 7500 employees with a total income of £334m.

Including its supply chain, BT supports more than 12,500 Scottish jobs.

BT employs more people than the nation’s petroleum and natural gas extraction sector.

It spent £109 million with local suppliers in 2010/11.

It is embedded in the community, working with partners across the Third Sector, and invests around £2.4 million per annum in community activities.

Keeping Scotland connected

Scotland’s rugged terrain and disparate population present unique communications challenges. The land mass covers 30,414 square miles, with the Highlands & Islands alone accounting for an area the size of Belgium. There are 790 islands, about 10 per cent inhabited.

BT provides Scotland’s only national communications networkstretching from the most remote inhabited islands to the rural lowlands – from Shetland to Stranraer and everywhere in between.

Scotland has 1,070 telephone exchanges, including 400 of the smallest in the UK, serving a population of five million.

Every Scottish exchange is connected to broadband, save 21 in the Western Isles served by a public wireless broadband project.

378 of the smallest exchanges, serving 51,000 households and 5400 businesses, were broadband-enabled in partnership with the Scottish Government.

BT is delivering a £multi million 21st Century Network for Scotland, upgrading exchanges to offer faster broadband over copper lines, at speeds of up to 20Mbps. It is now available in more than 170 Scottish exchange areas and another 45 are earmarked for upgrades in the coming months. By Spring 2012, around 1.5 million Scottish homes and businesses will be served by an upgraded exchange – equal to around 73 per cent of all premises.

BT has announced plans to bring super-fast, fibre broadband within the reach of almost 836,000 Scottish homes and businesses. Fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) currently offers download speeds of up to 40Mbps and upload speeds of up to 10Mbps. From early April 2012, new faster FTTC download speeds of up to 80Mbps and upload speeds of up to 20Mbps are also available for service providers to offer to their customers.

Even faster fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) will offer download speeds of up to 300Mbps from Spring 2012, and will be available on demand in FTTC enabled areas by Spring 2013. Download the list of Scottish exchanges in the fibre upgrade programme and visit www.superfast-openreach.co.uk for details.

Due to the current network topography, and the economics of deployment, it is likely that a small minority of premises within the selected exchange areas will not initially be able to be served by fibre-based broadband. However, BT’s local access network business, Openreach, is actively looking at alternative solutions for these locations.

Some form of public sector stimulus will be required to bring the social and economic benefits of high speed networks to those outside the commercially viable urban areas.

Computing and all forms of communication are going wireless. Scotland has nearly 320,000 WiFi hotspots and two Wireless Cities, where the city centres of Glasgow and Edinburgh have been enabled for extensive wireless coverage, enabling people to log on where they want using the device of their choice.

BT has conducted successful trials of Broadband Enabling Technology in the Highlands. BET is capable of delivering a stable 1Mb broadband service over lines that are up to 12km away from the exchange – more than double the current 5km reach for broadband. Where a second copper line is available, lines have been bonded together to provide a 2Mb service.

More people in Scotland have access to broadband than mains water or gas.

The local access network between exchanges and homes carries some 30 million telephone calls every day from around 2.2 million lines.

The local network is tended by some 2000 frontline Openreach engineers who live and work in every part of the country.

Openreach engineers visit around 1200 homes and businesses in Scotland every day, making 416,000 customer visits a year.

Collectively they climb around 36,500 telegraph poles a year - equivalent to 128 ascents of Ben Nevis - and test more than 52,000.

Despite the weather and terrain, an engineer is going to come calling less often than anywhere else in the UK. The average Scottish customer can expect a fault on the line once in every 16 years.

In the north of Scotland the average fault is once every 16.2 years and in the south of Scotland it’s 15.9 years.

The local network in Scotland includes 960,000km of copper access – enough to go around the world 25 times – and 560,000km of fibre – enough to go around the world 15 times.

It comprises 400,000 joint boxes; 336,000 distribution points; 527,000 telegraph poles; 16,000 manholes and 7,200 green cabinets.

BT Global Services in Scotland

Devolution has presented many opportunities to develop relationships with the public sector. BT Global Services is winning business with genuine partnerships based on flexible models, which deliver innovation and efficiency savings.

BT has called upon all political parties in Scotland to create a strategy to implement a common ICT network infrastructure for the public sector. Read the BT Scotland Manifesto.

Streamlining public sector ICT in Scotland could offer potential savings of more than £30 million on existing telephony and data costs and more than £100 million on the wider ICT spend.

Agile working has the potential to make savings of £3.2 billion in the public sector in Scotland if adopted by 40 per cent of the workforce. Other benefits include increased productivity and motivation; reduced sick leave; better work-life balance; enhanced recruitment and retention.

There is also potential to reap reduced travel costs and environmental benefits through effective use of technology including audio and video conferencing and avoidance of travel at peak pollution times.

Case study – Health Protection Scotland used BT MeetMe conferencing when it needed to quickly establish a way to collect data from health workers around Scotland to aid swine flu containment.

BT Global Services is also the partner of choice for some of Scotland’s biggest businesses, including Royal Bank of Scotland and National Australia Group, which owns The Clydesdale Banking Group.

Examples of BT working with the public sector in Scotland include:

• Disclosure Scotland, promoting safe recruitment through the disclosure of criminal history information. The partnership was launched in April 2002 and has delivered more than 2.5 million disclosures to date.
  
  “[BT] showed us their ability to manage and change with legislation that affects the service we supply. I have every confidence in BT to do that in the future and am looking forward to continued partnership with them.” - Brian Gorman, Manager of Disclosure Scotland

• NHS24 – a 10-year partnership since 2001, giving people in Scotland access to a confidential, nurse-led telephone service around the clock.
  
• NHS Scotland – A five year partnership with BT will see the creation of a single phone network for the NHS in Scotland, saving £4 million a year. It will be the first fully integrated public sector voice network of its scale in Scotland.
  
• The City of Edinburgh Council is leading the way in e-governance. The Council has extended its contract with BT to 2016 and is on track to meet a target of £25 million in ICT savings by 2011. Read the City of Edinburgh Council case study. The Council has recently worked with BT to introduce an integrated mobile working platform for Edinburgh Building Services, to provide better service at lower cost. The council operation employs 210 tradespeople and is responsible for a property portfolio of 23,000 homes. Read the case study.
  
  “Modernisation and change is never easy. The Council began its partnership with BT with an ICT service that had been starved of investment for many years. Since then, however, there have been positive developments and these are starting to deliver real benefits.” - Tom Aitchison, chief executive, The City of Edinburgh Council
  
• Registers of Scotland - a 10-year strategic partnership transforming systems through ICT; one major project is changing the face of land and property transfers in Scotland.
  
• Scottish Water – a £41.5 million, eight-year programme will integrate Scottish Water’s entire communications infrastructure to reduce IT costs and deliver improved services.
  
• Scottish Police Services Authority – BT is linking all eight Scottish forces within a secure, unified network. The country’s forces will eventually be able to share virtually all data for the first time, making the fight against crime more effective and freeing up staff for front line police work.

BT and Scottish business

BT Business has around 74,000 SME business customers in Scotland.

Scottish businesses are served by 55 BT Ethernet connection points delivered over BT’s 21st Century Network. Ethernet is a high speed business service offering faster, cheaper transfer of data and lower cost calls between sites at a fraction of the cost of traditional networks. Speed options range up to 1GB.

BT Local Business is a network of independent local businesses that are licensed to sell BT products and services. There are four BT Local Businesses in Scotland, which provide communications advice and solutions to thousands of small businesses and employ more than 90 people.

The BT Local Businesses cover North, Central, West and South West Scotland from offices in Aberdeen, Dundee, Livingston, Paisley and Hamilton.

Scottish-based home businesses generate an estimated annual income of £18 billion for the Scottish economy, according to BT research with home business organisation Enterprise Nation.

Deborah Brazendale is a one-minute commuter who runs her business Scottish Linen from a log cabin in the grounds of her family home on the remote Morvern peninsula below Ardnamurchan, West Highlands, overlooking sea lochs and mountains. Her luxury linen products can be found in many guest houses, holiday homes and hotels in Scotland and are exported to overseas markets including Australia, America, Poland and Japan. Deborah said: “Being at home to provide stability – and do the chores – for our family of six is working out well. Not even in my 30-something daydreams was home-working ever this good.”

Corporate responsibility

BT’s social programmes are designed to maximise its positive impact on society by working with key external stakeholders, such as devolved and local government and not-for-profit organisations. The Betterworld Campaign gives young people in Scotland the skills they need to succeed in life, improve their world and increase their communication and ICT skills. BT Scotland’s community investment includes its own bespoke programme, as well as a share of BT’s £26M UK corporate responsibility programme. BT Scotland programmes take into account Scotland’s educational, political and cultural needs, with activity focused on education, skills, social and digital inclusion and climate change.

BT Scotland Young E-ntrepreneurs

BT has invested more than £400,000 in its Young E-ntrepreneurs project with the Prince’s Scottish Youth Business Trust, helping more than 150 budding internet-based businesses get off the ground.

BT Scotland National Gaelic Schools Debate

The competition that gives Scottish pupils the last word – as long as it’s spoken in Gaelic – has seen dozens of Scottish schools compete to reach the annual final, now staged in the Scottish Parliament. Visit the website for more information.

Young Enterprise Scotland

The BT Scotland Young Enterprise Primary Programme takes enterprise education modules into primary schools and starts to build an understanding and appreciation of essential work and life skills such as team working, communication and time management.

ChildLine

BT Scotland works with ChildLine Scotland to help deliver essential helpline services for vulnerable young people from three call centres in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen. In addition to fundraising and technical support some BT employees act as volunteers and councillors for the charity.

Connected Earth

BT Scotland teamed up with National Museums of Scotland to launch a Connected Earth gallery in Edinburgh in 2002. Charting the evolution of communications from the early days to the 21st century and beyond, it forms a lasting memorial to Alexander Graham Bell in the heart of his hometown.

EverybodyOnline

A long-term collaboration has seen projects launched in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Caithness to help local people access the internet, learn new skills and find out how technology can improve their lives. The projects introduce basic ICT skills, for work and social use, to groups such as the elderly, unemployed and people with disabilities or those who require additional support.

BT Volunteering

Around a third of BT people currently volunteer with a charity or community group. BT encourages participation through a formal volunteering programme. Volunteers can spend up to three days of work time – or the equivalent hours – on their chosen projects. Opportunities range from being school governors to mentoring young entrepreneurs with the Prince’s Scottish Youth Business Trust or working on sporting projects associated with the 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games. BT people can also nominate their own cause.

BT and Climate Change

Scotland has some of the toughest environmental targets anywhere in the world - its climate change act sets a target of reducing emissions by 80 per cent by 2050, including emissions from international aviation and shipping. It also sets an interim target for a 42 per cent cut in emissions by 2020.

BT is a leader on climate change and environment within the Scottish business community and is engaged in two influential groups created by the Scottish Government to steer engagement and help meet Scotland’s challenging carbon reduction targets – the Climate Change Business Delivery Group and the 2020 Leadership Group. It also works with Scottish Business in the Community’s May Day Network on climate change.

BT is investing in solutions which can be commercialised for its customers, using technology to offer lower-carbon alternatives to travelling and traditional working environments.

The City of Edinburgh Council has become the first local authority in the UK to adopt an innovative carbon club initiative pioneered by BT. BT’s carbon clubs bring people together to work on carbon reduction initiatives. The company now has more than 130 clubs in operation, including several in Scotland, and more than 14,000 pledges to take action to have been made. The Council has launched five clubs as part of its pilot project. View a video of the BT Dundee carbon club.

BT’s large-scale, on-shore wind project, Wind for Change, is stepping up investment in Scotland following the Scottish Government’s decision to approve a new electricity transmission line. Wind for Change aims to develop 250MW of wind capacity to meet 25 per cent of BT’s existing energy needs by 2015.

Hampden – the National Stadium

BT is the official communications provider to Hampden Park, Scotland's national stadium. One of Scotland’s longest running sporting sponsorships, the partnership has been extended to 2014 and the start of the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.

A view from stakeholders

“BT Scotland has long been in the vanguard of expanding new information and communication technologies throughout the country. Broadband connectivity is now an essential part of our national infrastructure for business in Scotland and the quality and extent of our digital communications technology will increasingly be a defining factor in the success of our businesses and our ability to attract new investment to Scotland. Both the Scottish and Westminster Governments have key roles in ensuring the expansion of our capabilities in this regard.”

Garry Clark, Head of Policy and Public Affairs, Scottish Chambers of Commerce

"The availability of next generation broadband services is essential to the success of Scottish business and the economy. Communications infrastructure is not only critical to supporting growth and helping companies to invest, expand and locate in Scotland but will underpin public service reform. Efforts to stimulate demand for competitively-priced and affordable broadband infrastructure and services must be maintained to ensure all of Scotland has good broadband access."

Iain McMillan, director of CBI Scotland

“Ensuring that Scotland’s future communications infrastructure compares well to the rest of the UK – as well as the rest of the world – needs to be a high priority for all of Scotland’s politicians. Enterprise and the public’s expectations are beginning to shift and, despite the geographic, financial and political challenges that Scotland faces, it’s essential broadband solutions are found. Scotland needs its share of the estimated 600,000 jobs that could be encouraged through super-fast broadband UK-wide. We need Scottish technical ingenuity as well as political will to make this happen for Scotland’s small businesses.”

Andy Willox, Scottish Policy Convenor, Federation of Small Businesses

“SCDI is committed to working with BT Scotland to deliver against a shared vision of Scotland's digital future. To achieve our potential as a nation it is important that Scotland is inclusive, connected and uses ICT to maximise the potential of our assets and our people.”

Dr Lesley Sawers, Chief Executive, SCDI

"The STUC believes that faster broadband access across all our communities is essential if the Scottish Government's targets for growth, sustainability, solidarity and cohesion are to be achieved. Indeed, if Scotland's fragile remote economies are to have a sustainable future, faster broadband is an absolute prerequisite. The STUC is confident that the skills challenges involved in delivering and making best use of new infrastructure can be met if Government and stakeholders work together constructively.”

Stephen Boyd, Assistant Secretary, STUC

"I support a fair, equitable and sustainable digital future for all of Scotland. In view of the severe financial cutbacks affecting both the public and private sectors, I believe that realistic discussion is needed now to find innovative ways of funding which ensure that even the most inaccessible areas of Scotland are able to share in the new digital revolution."

Councillor Alison Hay, Regeneration and Sustainability, COSLA