Tag: BT

Which? blasts telecoms firms for price hikes

Posted on January 11, 2024 by - News

Which? has told telecom firms to stop any plans to go ahead with ‘unconscionable’ broadband and mobile price hikes in April, even after the industry watchdog found the practice hurts consumers and set out plans to ban it.

Ofcom recently planned to ban the practice of inflation-linked mid-contract price rises, saying that they cause ‘big consumer harm’, but this will not happen before the next wave of expected hikes in April 2024.

Many providers seem ready to shamelessly go on – with next week’s CPI inflation news set to start the announcements of the latest round of shocking hikes for consumers. Many may have already suffered increases of up to 17 per cent last year.

Which? Has written an open letter to big broadband and mobile providers – BT, EE, O2, PlusNet, Shell Energy Broadband, TalkTalk, Tesco Mobile, Three, Virgin Media and Vodafone – telling them to cancel any unfair and unpredictable price hikes planned for April this year. The letter has been published as a full-page national newspaper ad this morning.

Kirkby named BT’s new CEO

Posted on August 1, 2023 by - News

Canalys Forum EuropeAllison Kirkby will be BT’s first female CEO when she assumes the role early next year

Britain’s largest broadband and mobile company BT Group announced on Monday that Kirkby, current chief executive of Sweden’s Telia Company, will be taking on the role of BT’s next CEO.

She is scheduled to assume the new role by the end of January 2024, replacing the current CEO, Philip Jansen, who disclosed his upcoming departure earlier this month.

BT boss leaving over the next year

Posted on July 11, 2023 by - News

BT CEO Philip Jansen has announced that he will be clearing out his office and leaving “at an appropriate moment over the next 12 months”.

Rumours that BT’s board of directors had begun searching for a new chief exec started in March.,

Jansen first joined BT as CEO in 2019 and managed to nearly halve the company’s share value from 230p to 122p.

Customers looking for a phone upgrade

Posted on May 30, 2023 by - News

BT Wholesale says its customers want to upgrade their telephony systems, and many are happy to work with their existing channel partners to make it happen.

The company said that the end of the public switched telephone network (PSTN) happening in December 2025, companies are questioning their telephony strategy.

In a report, BT Wholesale wanted to find out what that meant for channel partners and went out to ask customers how they were feeling. It found that 70 percent of businesses are looking to invest in mobile connectivity this year – and many are also likely to do that with their existing partner relationships, with 88 per cent of those quizzed satisfied with their technology provider.

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BT downsizing

Posted on May 19, 2023 by - News

BT Group wants to reduce its workforce by 40,000 to 55,000 employees by the decade’s end.

The upcoming layoffs at BT Group will affect direct BT employees and third-party contractors, resulting in a reduction of 31-42 per cent in the company’s overall staffing.

The move comes as the company finalises its nationwide fibre-optic deployment and adapts emerging technologies like AI.

BT employs 130,000 people, including third-party contractors, but after the axeman has finished his work, this figure will be 75,000-90,000 individuals.

CEO Philip Jansen has been reducing headcount as part of his efforts to increase profitability in recent years. The aim is to achieve annual savings of £3 billion by the end of 2025, compared to the company’s cost base in 2020. BT says it has successfully attained £2.1 billion in cost savings out of its £3 billion target.

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Tollring renews its BT contract

Posted on May 3, 2023 by - News

Tollring has renewed its contract with BT for the seventh year.

The arrangement includes the supply of Tollring’s call analytics to nearly 100,000 users across the BT channels, supported by comprehensive customer engagement and sales enablement programmes to drive business growth.

The deal covers the continued provision of FMS (Fraud Management System) which protects the BT Group’s network from telecoms fraud.

Working collaboratively with BT, Tollring said it will continue to develop its customer engagement and sales enablement programmes, including fully branded support materials. Additional initiatives include tailored webinars, bitesize tutorials and libraries of sales support material.

Ofcom wants more time to think about Equinox II

Posted on March 21, 2023 by - News

UK communications regulator Ofcom has extended by two months its work into reaching a final decision on whether it should sit on its hands and let BT broadband division Openreach from introducing new wholesale pricing arrangements for its full-fibre services.

Dubbed the Equinox 2 the move to adopt a new framework for wholesale pricing on Openreach’s network was announced on 4 December 2022. In February 2023, Ofcom said that after carefully assessing Openreach’s offer – taking into account the interests of consumers, as well as the impact on competition among rival retail broadband providers – its provisional view was that it should not should not take any regulatory action.

It considered the Equinox 2 offer as not anti-competitive and that it was consistent with the rules it had consulted on before introducing them under its full-fibre market review in 2021. Ofcom stressed that maintaining these rules for the period of the review was also important to achieving certainty for all companies looking to invest in broadband networks.

BT expands global e-waste programme

Posted on October 7, 2022 by - News

BT has expanded its global e-waste programme for business customers by teaming up with networking giant Cisco to offer a new circular economy service.

Companies upgrading their network and IT infrastructure to support new multi-cloud deployments will be provided with a takeback service that will see BT environmental specialists map their sustainability requirements.

Replaced or decommissioned electronic equipment from a customer’s network will be shipped back to Cisco to be responsibility reused or recycled through its takeback and reuse programme. Up to 99.9% of what is returned will be reused or recycled, BT said.

BT claims strikes reckless

Posted on September 28, 2022 by - News

BT claims that it is doing its best to protect services after The Communication Workers Union (CWU)  escalated its strikes to emergency call workers.

BT gave its employees a £1,500 pay increase earlier this year but the CWU said that was a pay cut when taking into account inflation.

Some 40,000 telecoms engineers and call-centre staff are now being joined by critical-service workers to go on strike over pay in October.

The CWU has now served notice on BT for four days of strike action on 6, 10, 20, and 24 October.

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Security bosses focus on cloud

Posted on September 6, 2022 by - News

Enterprise security leaders in the UK are focused on cloud security, building up resilience against threats and aligning cybersecurity strategies with overall business goals.

A new research report The 2022 ISG Provider Lens Cybersecurity report from Information Services Group (ISG) claims cloud security is an enterprise manager’s top priority.

The growing use of cloud models such as infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) is forcing companies to adapt their cybersecurity approaches, with a focus on holistic resilience that requires more communication and training for employees and outside stakeholders, the report says.

BT hacked off that workers are striking again

Posted on August 16, 2022 by - News

BT has said it is “disappointed” that its workers are going to strike again in a dispute over pay.

The Communication Workers Union (CWU) notified the telecoms giant they will be holding two days of industrial action for its BT and Openreach members on 30 and 31 August.

BT workers walked out on July 29 and August 1, the first strike action in 35 years at the telecoms group. But it made no difference to BT which said it will not be reopening its 2022 pay review “having already made the best award we could”.

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BT strike kicks off

Posted on July 29, 2022 by - News

Workers at telecoms giant BT did not show up for work today in the first of two strikes in a row over pay.

Engineers and call centre staff voted in favour of industrial action after BT offered a £1,500 per year pay rise.

The Communication Workers Union (CWU) said the action will be the first national telecoms strike since 1987.

It has warned the strikes will likely to affect the rollout of ultra-fast broadband, and could cause issues for people working from home.

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BT workers strike over pay

Posted on July 19, 2022 by - News

More than 40,000 workers at BT are to take part in a two-day strike over pay.

The Communication Workers Union (CWU), which represents the telecom giant’s employees, has served the company with notice that its members will strike on Friday 29 July and Monday 1 August.

BT has offered its employees a £1,500 pay increase but the CWU is arguing that it is effectively a pay cut when taking inflation into account.

CWU general secretary Dave Ward said that it was not a case of an employer refusing to meet a union’s demands – this is about an employer refusing to meet iy.

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BT wants to grow

Posted on July 15, 2022 by - News

BT is looking to hire 2,800 more workers to hubs around the UK and India.

The technology giant says it plans to “on-board” around 1,000 new UK workers around sites in Birmingham, Manchester, Bristol, Belfast, Ipswich and London.

In India, BT will recruit approximately 1,800 new people centred around hubs in Bengaluru and Gurugram.

The roles span product management, software engineering, cloud, design, data, AI and machine learning and “agile delivery”.

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Nokia and BT team up on power efficient IP networks

Posted on June 30, 2022 by - News

Nokia said that BT will test its FP5 network processing silicon, including its 800G interfaces. The collaboration is part of the companies’ relationship to make sure the UK’s largest network has reduced power consumption in the future.

Nokia has added support for high-density 800G routing interfaces, a new embedded line rate, flow-based encryption capabilities, and a 75 per cent reduction in power consumption, which supports BT’s sustainability objectives to run the  network in the UK.