U.K. telco leader BT (LSE:BT-A.L) saw revenue in the quarter to end of June up 3.5 percent on the same period last year to £5 billion ($10.3 billion), while profit rose 31 percent to £607 million ($1.25 billion), including a one-off tax gain of £119 million ($244 million).
Broadband: Testament to strong U.K. broadband growth, BT overall got 459,000 more subscribers. The consumer retail division took 38 percent of the new broadband connections (up from 32 percent last quarter), giving it 175,000 new broadband customers, and expects to remain the U.K.’s number-one provider. Openreach, the subsidiary charged by regulators with opening up the local networks to broadband competitors of the former state monopoly, saw revenue increase two percent to £1.3 billion ($2.67 billion). In January, BT acquired Plusnet with its 195,000 customers.
BT declined to give subscriber figures for the BT Vision hybrid IPTV/Freeview broadband television service, which launched in December but which only got a marketing campaign this May.
– Telephony: Consumer revenue fell two percent, but BT says what it calls “new-wave” revenue (from networked IT services and broadband) is offsetting the decline in traditional areas. Revenue in this segment was was up 11 percent to £1.8 billion ($3.7 billion) and now makes up over a third of group revenue – specifically, revenue from broadband grew 19 percent to £540 million ($1.1 billion).
– VoIP: Customers for the Broadband Talk and BT Softphone services increased 23 percent to 1.7 million.
– 21CN: The rebuild of BTs underlying infrastructure into the so-called 21st Century Network, an all-IP telephone network that will also increase broadband speeds, took 36 percent more out of capital expenditure in the wholesale unit and two percent higher in Openreach. Following trial customer migrations in Cardiff, Wales, during the quarter, BT expects to complete first-phase migrations this year and launch “next-generation” 24Mbit broadband services nationwide by early 2008.