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| Summary
Financial Statement |
| Statutory
information |
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The principal areas
of turnover growth were through the acquisition
of interests in Europe and from interconnect
with UK operators.
Profits were
affected by a number of exceptional items,
in particular a £3 billion charge taken
against goodwill in Viag Interkom. Before
these items, earnings per share were 20.5
pence, compared with 34.2 pence in the previous
financial year. The lower earnings in the
current year were mainly due to higher interest
charges following the acquisition of businesses
and 3G licences over the past 18 months.
During 2001,
we began a radical restructuring of BT, with
the emphasis on setting up a number of separate
highly-focused businesses with potential for
growth. We intend to demerge BT Wireless
and will sell or demerge Yell.
Acquisitions
and disposals
We have taken full
control of Telfort in The Netherlands, Viag
Interkom in Germany and, in April 2001, full
control of Esat Digifone in the Republic of
Ireland.
More recently
we have announced the prospective disposal
of our interests in Airtel in Spain, Japan
Telecom and J-Phone in Japan and Maxis Communications
in Malaysia.
In the UK
Calls on our fixed network accounted for about
28% of group turnover. Call volumes continued
to grow with, on average, 90 million UK local
and national calls being made every day.
Many other
telecommunications operators use our network
to help deliver their customers’ calls. This
interconnect activity has increased rapidly
and accounted for about 14% of group turnover.
We continued
to invest in our UK network to meet increasing
demand for high-quality fixed-network products
and services. In less than a year we have
replaced nearly half of the trunk exchanges
which took five years to install in the 1980s.
We have continued
to reduce prices and simplify our pricing
structure, and have introduced new options,
such as BT Together, to give customers greater
choice and control over how they are charged
for our services.
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Mobility
BT Cellnet
had 11.2 million customers as at
31 March 2001, an increase of more than 50%
during the 2001 financial year. In the UK,
BT Cellnet acquired a 3G licence for
£4.03
billion.
Through Telfort,
Viag Interkom and Esat
Digifone we have 5.7 million mobile customers
outside the UK. |
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Internet
We have launched
a range of mass-market broadband internet
services aimed at consumers, small businesses
and teleworkers. We continue to develop a
range of tools, including communications,
navigation and personalisation, all of which
will be linked and made available through
a Personal openworld Portal accessible across
a number of devices.
Research
and development
We invested
£364 million in research and development
on areas including next-generation internet,
broadband wireless and network management.
BT people
At 31 March
2001, BT employed around 137,000 people throughout
the world, with 117,900 in the UK, making
us one of the UK’s largest employers. During
the year we formed a joint venture with Accenture
(formerly Andersen Consulting) to deliver
outsourced human resources services to large
organisations. BT prides itself on being a
learning organisation. Increasingly, we are
using the internet to deliver training and
development programmes.
Our commitment
to society
BT takes seriously
the responsibility that comes with being a
company that has the potential to improve
people’s lives through better communication.
We make regular donations in the UK to direct
activities in support of society, such as
education. Our UK operations have ISO 14001
certification, the international standard
for environmental management systems.
Statement
of Business Practice
To reinforce
our commitment to achieve best practice in
our standard of business integrity, a copy
of BT’s Statement of Business Practice has
been sent to every employee. We also require
our agents and contractors to apply these
principles when representing BT.
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