BT reveals achievements from digital investment

BT Group CEO Gavin Patterson has revealed the telecom operator’s achievements from digital investment.
BT free WiFi in London
BT Group reported revenue of £5.716 billion (–2 percent) with EBITDA of £1.8 billion in the first quarter of 2018-19.

BT has generated revenue of £2.591 billion (+2 percent) from Consumer, £1.085 billion (–4 percent) from Business and Public Sector, £459 million (–8 percent) from Wholesale and Ventures, £1.147 billion (–8 percent) from Global Services and £1.217 billion (–2 percent) from Openreach.

Capital expenditure (Capex) of BT Group was £839 million – essentially flat as compared with Q1 2017-18.

BT Group said its Capex spending was £428 million on fixed network, £224 million on customer driven investments, £150 million on systems and IT, and £37 million on non-network infrastructure.

BT Consumer customers’ use of eChat increased 8 percent and 2.5 million customers have now downloaded the My BT app. There was a 12 percent increase in My EE app downloads to under 11 million. More than 24,000 customers have downloaded its first business app.

BT used digital technology to stop over 100 million unwanted calls through free Call Protect product.

BT achieved 10 percent reduction in customer contact about service issues since Q1 2017-18 after deploying digital channels. BT reduced call waiting times for its business customers by a third to 44 seconds.

EE and BT Consumer customers have seen average call waiting times halved to 37 and 34 seconds respectively.

BT said 50 percent of its SME customers and over 60 percent of residential customers now have Superfast Broadband at 24Mbps or above.

BT’s 4G geographic mobile network coverage has increased, reaching over 98 percent of the population.

BT’s Ultrafast Broadband which includes FTTP and Gfast is available to more than 1.7 million customers.