BT profits from services BT almost doubled profits in the last quarter of 2010, even though total turnover was slightly down. In the three months ended 31 December 2010 the telco made revenues of £5.038bn, down three per cent. But profit before tax was up 30 per cent to £531m. BT added 188,000 DSL customers, a 53 per cent market share. Global …
Nice.
Is 50% profit on sales typical of that industry sector worldwide?
Does this mean they'll be recruiting some new fixit folk?
Does this mean they'll be attempting to retain the few clued-up fixit folk they still have?
Does this mean they'll be organising a training programme to grow some of the smarter existing staff into clued-up staff?
Pay rise? Bonus? Nah, that one never works outside the City..
If you go to the BT corporate news page, you'll see that the £550m figure for OpenReach is not a profit number, it's EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation. The operating profit figure is £329 million, off of which would have to be taken interest charges. From what I can work out, the itnerest chages for the group were about £200m in the quarter and a proportionof that would have to be netted off.
http://www.btplc.com/News/Articles/Showarticle.cfm?ArticleID=E9EBBBBE-5744-4DF7-B30C-D279879ADA77
EBITDA is one of those statistics that appears to have come toi prominance at the tame of the dot-com explosion and is meant, in some way, to show the underlying performance of a company during heavy growth periods. Personally, I think it's a con - and it is no way to measure a company in relatively steady-state.
So good profits...... No doubt helped by the rip off in market one areas where we pay a higher data cost for the slowest services from exchanges that have seen nil investment since the ADSLMax service was introduced
Time our tourist class service had a nice low tourist class price tag instead of the ofcom sanction predatory pricing.
Maybe BT would like to invest some of those profits in finally upgrading this county to 21cn and WBC as the WBC RFS dates keep disappearing... no doubt to fund/provision yet another upgrade in already faster areas. maybe its time to force BT to complete the WBC upgrade across the UK.. and drop the ADSL requirement for a voice line that many DONT want or need.
OFCOM and BT... theres something "redneck" about that.
Fixed line number portability does not work (unlike in the mobile market); so there is very little churn. I'm moving house, I am fed up with BT (try calling them - call waits of 30 - 55 mins are normal). I thought, in the new house, get broadband and line provision from someone else. 02 can't do it (at capacity in the local exchange), Sky won't transfer my number (they will only transfer if taking over an existing line - i.e. same address).... I was hoping I could transfer to Vonage (but, because there is broadband on the line, apparently BT can block it).
Make the fixed wire services more open to competition - then it'll be good for the consumer. Changing number deters most people from leaving their provider.
I'm not overly suprised - the last few years have seen contract lengths extend dramatically. Business Broadband, telephone, ISDN, leased line all have longer mandatory contract lengths from 2 to 5 years. Furthermore, contracts get automatically renewed unless without intervention unless you contact BT at the right time.
They seem to be moving to this model for the home market too. Last year the home DSL T&Cs changed to say that the contract would automatically renew unless you contacted BT within a very small time window - too short a period to swap providers no doubt. Outside of this window you would have to pay extra fees. Long gone are the days when the original contract length was a year and then you had a rolling 30 days to cancel.
One thing to note - if you contact them in the renewal period and threaten to leave, they will price match PlusNet giving you a significant discount.
I called to cancel my contract; was told BT's phorm trial was entirely legal and not grounds for cancelling the contract outside of the contract term. I'm on BT Business Broadband, I don't have the resources to take BT to court but I won't be extending the contract with them and will be actively discouraging anyone I know to do the same.
It would be different if they held their hands up and said it was poor judgement - at least I would feel that they wouldn't try a stunt like this again...
They do, it's a lovely little Ofcom-approved scam to allow Big BT to remain the overpriced provider of underperforming services to the vast underinformed sector of the market.
Meanwhile BT Sheffield (formerly Plusnet) can use BT's vast revenues to undercut the small number of remaining independent (although still mostly BT-dependent) ISPs.
Nice.
Remember, it's not Plusnet, it's BT Sheffield.
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