Keeping the Nation Connected

BT published its first quarter results this week – revenue was £4.25billion. Voipfone will do somewhat better than that if you drop the billion and ignore the fact that BT’s results were for three months and Voipfone’s are for twelve….

I think that demonstrates why BT is so poor at customer service – it doesn’t need to be; and why we win awards for it – we really have to try; it’s our life blood.

But BT are doing some things right just at the moment, fibre broadband is now available to 23m premises, their new mobile business now has 100,000 users and its new TV product has 1.2m, so pre-tax profit was up 9% to £694m.

I’m pleased for BT, not just because I need the pension and the divies, but also I like to see the old girl doing well as the industry as a whole depends so much on its infrastructure to build its own products and services.

A thriving BT is good for the industry, but it needs to sort its house out on the bread and butter stuff of installing telephone lines and fixing faults. It’s getting assailed by its competitors – most notably SKY – for its increasingly poor operations in these basic areas and it’s under threat now from various bodies – not least Ofcom – to split Openreach from BT entirely.

I’m not a big fan of this idea, I don’t think that will fix anything, just create a huge distraction for BT but it may make Ofcom and the politicians feel like they’re doing something – always a risk.

As the Fat Controller almost said, ‘there are only two ways to run a telephone business, the Voipfone way and the wrong way.”