Mobility
There’s more
to mobility than mobile phones. Real mobility is
a way of life. It’s all about being able to
communicate wherever we are, whenever we like,
using whichever device – phone, mobile,
laptop, palmtop – we choose. The key concept
is “convergence” – providing solutions
that meet people’s needs, as cost-effectively
as possible, by combining “the best of fixed
and the best of mobile”.
Business and corporate
mobility
For our business customers, we focus on
providing mobility solutions for voice and data communications, both in the UK
and globally, working with these customers to
deliver improved productivity and cost
management.
For example, we launched BT
Mobile Office. The people who advertisers like
to think of as “corporate road warriors” –
that’s sales people, engineers, drivers
and so on – can contact their work base and
access their corporate network via a single,
smart log-in application.
By making use of the best
possible connection available – fixed, mobile,
or wireless broadband – they have access to
all kinds of information – emails, texts,
voice messages and so on – while in the office or on the
move.
In 2003, we reached agreement
to provide Vodafone UK with a managed access transmission network in the
UK, connecting its base stations to its core
switches. Vodafone will benefit from
simplification of processes – including a
formalised payment structure – as well as access to any new
technologies implemented by BT within the
five-year term of the contract.
Consumer
mobility
During the 2004 financial year, we re-entered the consumer mobility market
with BT Mobile Home Plan. Aimed at
families, its features include voice and text
bundles to suit the family’s calling habits
and reduced monthly rental rates for more than
one mobile.
And because research shows that
people phone home from their mobiles an average
of five times a week, we’ve included the
opportunity for them to make free quick calls home to the family fixed-line.
And our mobile services are back in
over 1,000 high street stores through
our relationships with Carphone Warehouse, The
Link and Phones 4U.
In May 2004, we announced
plans to change the face of communications in
the UK by working with Vodafone to offer fully
converged, fixed/mobile services in the business
and consumer mobile markets.
Project Bluephone is
the first step towards handset convergence
because it removes the need to own more than one
phone.
Customers will be able to use a single device
that can switch seamlessly between fixed and
mobile networks, offering a better service with
more guaranteed coverage and lower overall
costs. A “soft launch”, involving more than
1,000 users, is planned for the summer of 2004
and a full launch for later in the year.
Wireless
broadband
We’ve also been developing our position as the UK’s leading provider of public
wireless broadband (Wi-Fi) services.
BT Openzone
gives our customers a public-access, wireless
broadband connection, enabling them to access
the internet at selected public venues or
“access points”, using their wireless-enabled laptop or PDA (personal
digital assistant) at almost 2,400 locations (as
at 31 March 2004). This means that anyone with an enabled laptop can sit down
in motorway service stations, airports,
conference centres, hotels and cafes, BA lounges globally and over 500
McDonald’s restaurants around the country and log on.
To experience Openzone is
to experience just one of the ways in which
communication is being transformed.
|
