Broadband
“Information technology is transforming our world and broadband is at
the forefront of this revolution. By speeding up
communication, broadband is opening up new
opportunities in almost every area of our lives. It will play a central role in the reform of our public
services, improving our competitiveness and
building a modern digitally connected Britain.”
So said the Prime Minister, Tony
Blair, when he visited the broadband-enabled
Trimdon exchange in his constituency.
A couple of years ago, people
were sceptical about the idea of Broadband
Britain. They thought it was only something for the tech-savvy.
But as the UK’s leading supplier of
DSL (digital subscriber line) broadband
services, we’ve turned that perception round.
We’ve put the infrastructure in place and
we’ve proved that the demand for broadband is
enormous.
From narrowband to
broadband
BT is transforming itself from a narrowband to a broadband company. In
February 2004, we passed our target of two
million wholesale broadband lines, just eight
months after hitting our first million, and in May 2004 we reached 2.45
million. 90% of UK homes and businesses are
now connected to broadband-enabled exchanges. And we continue to work
in partnership with community organisations and business development agencies,
to explore innovative ways to bring broadband to people connected to the very
smallest exchanges in the UK, or who live more
than six kilometres from their nearest exchange.
The first step was upgrading
to broadband more than 1,100 of our exchanges where there was a
clear commercial case for doing so.
In July 2002, we introduced a demand-driven registration scheme, which
enabled people in areas where the exchange had
not been upgraded to register an interest. This hugely successful scheme
attracted more than 860,000 registrations,
helping us match our investment to demand, and
the total of exchanges upgraded as at 19 May
2004 stood at 2,652.
Because the registration scheme gave us such a clear picture of demand, we were able to announce in April 2004
the speeding up of the delivery of broadband
services to rural communities. The scheme is now closed and we
intend to roll out broadband to exchanges
serving 99.6%
of the UK’s homes and businesses, by no later
than the summer of 2005.
The broadband
experience
For customers at home, broadband is more than just another technology; it’s a
whole new experience – faster, richer, more
interactive, more rewarding than its dial-up predecessor.
And the visual dimension is proving
to be critical. Narrowband may be OK for text; but the broadband experience
offers the chance of video emails, the chance to
download video clips or holiday trailers,
without ever leaving home.
Because we know that
different customers have different broadband
requirements, we offer a Broadband from BT
Family range of products and services, from BT Broadband
Basic – for less than £20 a month – to BT
Broadband 1Mb – our fastest broadband service so
far.
During the year, BT and Yahoo!
jointly launched BT Yahoo! Broadband,
which gives customers high quality, compelling
and personalised content and services
(news, sport and entertainment) and advanced security (anti-spam, email anti-virus and a free firewall) for £29.99 a month.
We also announced a set of
innovative broadband services that will be at the
heart of our broadband lifestyle strategy,
enabling the delivery of compelling,
personalised content. These are:
 Flexible
Bandwidth, which
enables users to upgrade the speed of their
connection at a click of a button if, for
example, they want to watch a movie
BT
Communicator, for making free PC-to-PC calls, or PC-to-phone calls at
BT Together prices, and instant
messaging
BT Rich
Media, which enables users to
receive, manage and pay for content, securely,
online.
By giving customers a wide choice
of connection speeds and content options we aim to drive broadband adoption in the
UK and reach our target of five million
broadband connections by 2006.
The broadband economy
And broadband is driving change in the economy as a whole.
At the end of the 2004 financial
year, BT Business Broadband remained the leading ISP (internet service provider)
for SMEs (small and medium enterprises) in the UK. We had
more than 240,000 business customers,
many of whom were customers for our added-value
broadband services such as Internet Security
Pack and Internet Business Pack.
At the end of March 2004, we
were converting business customers to broadband at the rate of more than
one business customer for every minute of the
working day.
Broadband can also transform the
ways corporations and other large organisations
communicate with customers, suppliers and employees. Broadband teleworking, for example, offers businesses the chance to build a diverse and
motivated workforce, while offering employees
the chance to create a more rewarding work-life
balance.
In April 2004 we launched BT Connected &
Complete,
featuring Microsoft technology – a one-stop
shop providing small businesses with secure
broadband access, applications, services,
support and maintenance – all from a single source and on one
bill.
In May 2004 we announced a series of price cuts –
of
between 15% and 70% – and simplification of our LLU (local loop
unbundling) product, which will benefit those
companies willing to innovate and invest in
broadband infrastructure.
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