20 Mar 2012BT Retail

British Telecom (BT) is the main incumbent fixed telephone operator in the United Kingdom and a leading provider of telecommunications services in Europe. BT offers its broadband services through BT Retail, BT Global Services, BT Wholesale and BT Openreach.

BT Retail is responsible for sales to consumers and SMEs. It includes BT Business Broadband and other BT Internet Service Providers (ISPs). BT Global Services deals with larger corporate customers and international services. BT Wholesale sells BT services, including a range of DSL-based broadband products, to other service providers for resale to end-users. BT Openreach is responsible for providing transparent and equal access for all service providers to the BT local access network. In this role, Openreach implements and maintains local-loop unbundling (LLU) connections for all ISPs (including BT's own ISPs) on equal terms.

On 26 November 2010, BT announced that M&M has offered to acquire up to a 5.5% stake in Tech Mahindra. This deal was completed on December 14 2010.

In support of its customer-facing divisions, BT has been transforming its business strategy to focus on being a networked IT services company, delivering software-driven products over broadband, rather than being a simple communications service provider. In April 2007 it announced a restructuring of its production arm, dividing it into two units, “BT Design”, responsible for designing and developing new services, and “BT Operate”, responsible for the deployment and operation of these new services. With this change, the company has been successfully strengthening its sectoral presence as well as its international presence via subsidiaries.

In July 2008, BT demonstrated a commitment to Next Generation Access (NGA) in the UK, announcing a proposed £1.5 billion investment in NGA. Trials began in the Summer of 2009 and the service should be available to 40% of the country by 2012.