BT profits crash BT's pre-tax profit fell 81 per cent compared to the third quarter of last year. In the three months ended 31 December 2008 the telco made £113m in profit, compared to £601m in the last three months of 2007. Revenue was £5,437m, up five per cent from £5,154m the year before. BT is writing off £336m as a result of contract …
"BT shares are down about five per cent at the time of writing"
Now, how do we get El Reg readers to persuade the general public that Phorm is a BAD thing and to move to ISP's who aren't going to profit from their personal browsing data.
My MP is not interested in the least, I live in Ipswich and he's an ex-BT employee and his wife still works for them.
If the public start leaving BT this could make them think about their Phorm strategy. At the moment, Phorm have persuaded the majority of ISPs so there is little choice. I guess it's a bit like the free-range egg issue, one retailer says "no" and slowly the rest stop using battery eggs in their products (M&S, Co-op, Sainsburys) - there will always be a Tesco though.
BT shares losing 15% of their value is what is required to influence Mr. Livingstone. He jumped from Dixons just in time.
BT have managed to turn me against them over the last couple of years, with their above inflation bandwidth price hike for IP Stream hostages on market one exchanges, and now with the domestic phone hikes - all because of rising costs, and yet they can afford to cut business rates?
I wont be screwed any further, my phone services have been cut back to a basic line - line rental will move soon to another company - depriving BT of at least some of the potential profit from me, Im working on moving other members of my family too. I wish we had LLU here so that I could avoid being screwed over by BT in paying more for my Broadband connection than LLU customers who get better speeds for less - often with better data allowances.
OfcoN are no use, they meekly stand by and allow BT to screw the public, whether by using domestic price hikes to bankroll cuts for business users, or by selling customers click data to former malware operators (Phorm)
I hope that people will ditch BT - there are cheaper alternatives out there who have some damned good deals going. It really is time that the network was taken into central control not associated with BT - the "separation" is a farce, the BT group is still a group of "associated companies" which ever way you livery it!
BT should either operate the core network - or a retail/wholesale service, but without control of the network as well.
Mines the one with BT's hand trying to steal my wallet
Im surprised they made profit at all, the way they shaft their customers.
Last summer my mother in laws phone line was unavailable for several weeks due to a BT fault (their side) they couldnt be arsed to fix. They agreed to route land line calls via her mobile number at no additional cost...
Until she received a bill for the calls, talking to BT diddnt do any good, so shes going to contact Telcon quango Offcom to see what they have to say about it.
So no surprises that growing numbers dont like BT & I personally would rather pay more to another company than have anything to do with BT.
As a BT customer for phone and broadband (and a loyal one at that), I'm dissapointed that BT is suffering but I can see why.
They recently asked me to extend my contract to 18 months in return for a small discount on my monthly bill. When I said that I would extend my contract if they could deliver the speeds they claim are possible at which point they offered to send an engineer out (at a cost to me) to replace some of the wiring that handles my broadband.
Because they won't do this for free I've cancelled my contract and arranged for fibre optic broadband, TV and phone from Virgin who are totally independant of the BT infrastructure. All Virgin will have to do to keep me as a customer is maintain the service I pay for and occasionally offer me an upgrade. BT have lost a long standing customer and may never see another penny from me and I bet I'm not the only one. I fear BT's days are numbered.
Some BT engineers are very good and can fix the problems their management ignores. The infrastructure is slow but solid. Would I trust a landline routed through those thin Virgin streetboxes with their doors always swinging open?
So for a solid landline they are usually the best risk. Then use VOIP and decent ISP to do your phone/internet stuff and you get a decent quality/cost service.
Given that BT is left with a declining share of a possibly shrinking market - they have done not too badly (Global Div excepted). And BT ain't as bad as the mobile companies in rip-off tariffs!
The business model is shot. People are less and less interested in landlines, mobiles are far more useful. Broadband could rescue them, especially as part of a package, but they've chosen to shoot that down in flames by offering a middle-of-the-road service with Phorm and throttling thrown in.
Cost, speed/throttling and monitoring are the only things a user is really interested in when it comes to broadband, and they've decided to make themselves repulsive on all three counts.
They deserve to wither and die if they don't change.
I deal with BT all the time, and everyone I talk to there says "It's not our fault, it is another department" who have disconnected 150 phone lines/stopped broadband/removed ISDN link/cocked up the bill.
BT is an organisation of buck passers. That's why all my services are with other suppliers.
A Former BT Customer....
Small trader I visited earlier in the week wanted a broadband link in the office a few months back, to do a small amount of ecommerce. BT wanted £100+ installation for a new line plus £60/month ongoing. Trader says no. Trader buys Orange 3G dongle and pays £10/month.
Wake up BT. Your managers and marketing people have lost the plot, while your competent engineers in the field and elsewhere are losing their jobs.
BT's much-touted "creative" processes for workforce reduction means everyone gets two bad performance reviews a year and anyone unlucky enough to get three gets a free P45.
As for BT Global Services... let's just not go there, right?
BT have clearly realised that they do not have the luxury of being a state monopoly anymore... the fixed lines business is providing less revenue as mobile phones increase in popularity... there's more competition in the deregulated telecoms market...
So what do they do?
After getting their arrogant client services people to hassle all IT decision makers, they will make every attempt, both overt and covert, to try and take over and manage (read: outsource) as many WANs and LANs as possible. Yes, even the WAN or LAN that YOU support and manage in-house with your own staff/colleagues.
Have a look at the BT Global Services website if you don't believe me. There's no mention of *working with IT departments* to deliver solutions, only how BT are needed by businesses because they apparently understand how important they are when it comes to deriving efficiency from IT. But they will only do that if you let them run your networks, and your infrastructure. Their partner HP will happily look after your servers.
I really hope BT fail. There are much better companies out there that will happily work in *partnership* with IT departments to deliver quality solutions at much lower costs!
Because.. they are a bunch of pirates!
A friend of mine built himself a new house next door and has just moved into it.
He spoke to BT eons in advance of the move and explained what he wanted. It was fairly simple; he wanted to be able to move himself, his family, his stuff, his phone line and his ADSL (not BT) from one house to the other on the same day. The Indian on the end of the line said that would be no problem and took his details. Then all of a sudden, nothing whatsoever happened. Then it happened again. Despite much phoning and poking and pointed question asking, nothing continued to happen again and again .. but it happened so close together that you couldn't really tell when one stopped and the next nothing started.
Suffice to say he and therefore his business, has been off the net for coming up 3 weeks now while BT keep handing on the buck like a game of pass the parcel bomb.
Why are BT losing money? Because they are completely useless that's why.
All the beefs about broadband and the treatment of small companies or retail customers are kinda irrelevant here - the BT divisions that manage those customers and products have just had their best year in 5 years. It's BT Global Services that have had one-off write downs that have affected the profits. Maybe try reading the actual story next time?
I don't have enough words to describe my disdain for BT retail.
Not only do they rob the dead.... (Google BT Robbing)
They are bully boys, thieves and scum. Natural justice demands that someone stamps them out. My eyes are now wide open to their exploits (by hard experience), and I doubt I shall ever return to them again.
If they offer you a contract just don't accept it. It'll shorten your life. They'll only take a small piece of you, but they put them all together and snort them up in some seedy back room, I'm sure.
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