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| Year ended, or as at, 31 March
2001: |
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| Total turnover,
including share of ventures |
£3,861m |
| Group turnover |
£3,470m |
| EBITDA before exceptionals
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£47m |
| Operating loss before
goodwill amortisation and exceptionals |
£(380)m |
| Capital expenditure
on plant, equipment and property |
£936m |
| Net operating assets
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£3,584m |
| Share of ventures’
net assets, including goodwill |
£178m |
| Employees |
18,800 |
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BT Ignite, our solutions and broadband IP business, delivers a range
of services, including customer solutions, application service packages,
web hosting and data transport to European business customers.
Building on its position as a leading business in the European services
market, as measured by customer and revenue base, BT Ignite plans
to continue to build its revenues from the high end of the value
chain – value-added services and complex solutions –
from current levels of 50% of revenue. It aims to use its large
sales force to add more business customers and increase revenue
per customer by selling more of these higher value products and
migrating customers towards tailored services, such as moving customers
through hosting and applications to solutions. Its strategy for
moving into profitability also includes increasing the throughput
in its existing network infrastructure of cables and data hosting
to benefit from operational gearing. We also expect to generate
synergies across BT Ignite by establishing functional responsibilities,
including single network management and single product management
across the business. We are discussing a variety of strategic alternatives
to the Concert joint venture which could include all, or a substantial
portion, of the business currently within BT Ignite. See “Discussions
with AT&T regarding Concert and BT Ignite” .
Across Europe, BT Ignite is primarily a service business supported
by its own infrastructure. BT Ignite has a sales force of 4,000
employees, including 2,000 solutions consultants. It sells directly
to businesses in Europe and sells to businesses in the UK through
BT Retail’s sales force.
Value-added services
BT Ignite’s international solutions businesses had turnover
of £2,082 million, including work done for other parts of BT, in
the 2001 financial year. External turnover from solutions accounted
for 5% of group turnover in the same period.
Syntegra, our global consulting and systems integration business,
is a market leader in creating new systems, which, through the use
of the internet and associated technologies, are transforming business-to-business
relationships around the world. Syntegra has customers in more than
60 countries.
BT Ignite Solutions (formerly Syncordia Solutions) is a leading
provider of integrated information and communications solutions.
Underpinned by the internet and associated technologies, these solutions
are based on end-to-end managed IP networks and the provision of
e-business and e-CRM (electronic Customer Relationship Management)
applications on these networks.
BT Ignite offers a range of advanced web hosting application and
network services, utilising its 21 internet data centres in Europe.
BT Ignite’s internet data centres provide the hardware, software
and high-speed communications connections required by customers
to run their websites and other online business applications, allowing
these customers to focus on their core business and meet growing
requirements for e-commerce.
BT Ignite Application Services provides software over IP networks
to large and small companies, generally on a per user rental basis.
Application Services has developed partnerships with key software
providers, including Microsoft, Lotus, Commerce One and Verisign,
to provide a range of e-mail, collaborative e-commerce and security
applications.
European network
BT Ignite, with its European partners, has a pan-European fibre
network which provides coverage to the top 100 commercial centres
and serves over 400,000 business customers with 52,000 route kilometres
of fibre cable connecting 250 towns and cities through Belgium,
Denmark, France, Germany, the Republic of Ireland, Italy, The Netherlands,
Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK.
BT Ignite is responsible for broadband services based on DSL technology
in the UK, selling wholesale DSL products to more than 150 service
providers and corporate clients. These enable service providers
to offer their own customers fast access to high-value content and
applications. They also enable corporate customers to provide their
teleworkers with fast, remote access to their private networks on
the internet.
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