Cymraeg

Welcome to the BT Wales website

We have embarked on a journey, and people sometimes ask where it will end. Business is not a game where someone blows a whistle and there is a final result.  Instead, a business is a continuing activity and there are always fresh challenges to be faced.

The communications industry is one of continual change and BT is barely recognisable as the company it was five years ago. Five years ago, we were primarily a UK lines and calls business; today we are offering communications possibilities that no one had even thought of back then to customers in 170 countries.

In a very short time, we’ve gone from a narrowband, fixed-line communications business, to a broadband company harnessing the power of modern networks to help our customers communicate anywhere, any time, using whatever devices they happen to choose.

We’ve brought levels of choice and control to our customers at home, at work, or out and about, that would once have seemed impossible. Who would have thought five years ago that BT would be offering next-generation digital TV over broadband? Our BT Vision service enables customers to watch what they want when they want - without having to pay a monthly subscription.

Who would have thought that our customers would have been benefiting from intelligent, seamless fixed/mobile communications - like BT Fusion - at home, at work or in between - chatting, swapping data, surfing the internet, doing business?

Who would have thought that we would be helping some of the world’s largest companies and organisations do business and serve their customers around the world?

But the thing about transformation, however radical and however successful, is that there is no end point. No moment at which you can sit back and think ‘job done’.

Even when we hit five million broadband connections in 2005 - more than a year ahead of schedule - there was no time to take it easy. Today, that number is around 11 million and climbing. Here in Wales more than 444,600 people are already connected to broadband covering 99%* of the country.

The telecommunications world is changing rapidly and business, government and the people of Wales need to be aware of new developments and the potential they hold for improving our prosperity and our quality of life.

For businesses, convergence means new ways of finding and keeping in touch with customers, new routes to market, new ways of working, easier use of flexible working and cheaper services.

Convergence means that if you are near a Wi-Fi hot spot, such as BT Openzone, you will be able to connect to the internet at "fixed" speed and quality through the BT network. Currently in Cardiff alone there are more than 100 BT Openzone hotspots linking the city centre and parts of Cardiff Bay to the wireless network but such developments are now being seen in Swansea, Aberystwyth and Caernarfon and many other places across Wales.

In the coming months and years a quiet transformation will be taking place. Networks able to move vast amounts of data efficiently around the country and globe are being built by communications companies like BT. That capability will unleash multiple providers to develop and supply new services we can scarcely imagine today. The pace of innovation will accelerate and we will truly live in rapidly changing times.

Our 21st Century Network will help to make Wales one of the most advanced telecommunications countries in the world, transforming our business and supporting the next generation of flexible, cost-efficient services. Some areas of South East Wales have been selected to lead the way on this exciting and radical next generation communications network, the first deployment of its kind in the world.

* The delivery of broadband services is governed by both network economics and technical limits. BT estimates currently that approximately 99% of the Welsh population could receive broadband service if ordered. BT cannot provide a definitive figure as the characteristics of lines differ from household to household and business to business.

Ann Beynon, BT Director Wales