British Telecom (BT) claims to hold a 27% share of the total broadband market, surpassing both O2 and Virgin Media as the UK’s most popular high-speed internet provider. BT made revenue of £5 billion during the last quarter, earning an average of £283 per customer.
Broadband has proved to be one of BT’s most lucrative properties and thousands of new clients flock to the provider every day. At the end of September, the telecommunications giant claimed to have over 4.6 million broadband customers and 13.3 million wholesale broadband connections.
The figures belie an increasingly desperate situation, however, with profits from telephone customers floundering well below predicted targets. BT kept a meagre 14% of its total revenue (0.7 billion), a few hundred million less than for the same period last year.
A report compiled by the Regulatory News Service (RNS) blamed the slow uptake of BT’s Global Services package – a networking solution for businesses – for the recent dip in quarterly profits. BT’s chief executive, Ian Livingstone, explained that profits from the Global Services proposition are “simply not good enough” and pledged decisive action to correct the problem.
BT bosses have implied that extensive redundancies will be required before the end of the next financial year if the company is to improve overall profits. A total of 4,000 agency and contracted BT staff members have already lost their jobs while a further 6,000 are expected to face the axe before March 31st 2009. BT’s pension scheme will also suffer cutbacks.
The complete RNS half-year report is available online.
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