back to article BT airs out new business structure as it digests EE

BT is to create a Frankenstein business unit on April Fools' Day worth £5bn out of old parts of BT Global Services focused on the UK, BT Business and EE's newly acquired business unit, it announced during "record" third quarter financial results. The major restructure plans come days after the outfit completed its £12.5bn …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Oh good

    Record profits. Does this mean record investment in broadband infrastructure?

    Lol jk.

    1. A Non e-mouse Silver badge

      Re: Oh good

      Or Customer Service?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Pirate

      Re: Oh good

      Clearly putting a monumental effort into not spending ANYTHING on getting anyone who's out of reach of reliable ADSL onto fibre.

      Well done state *sponsored* monopoly.

      Money grubbing bastards.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Points to Openreach and tells Ofcom it is already at 'arm's length'

    Of course.

    Like a heavily soiled nappy you've just removed from your shoe.

    How else would you hold it?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Points to Openreach and tells Ofcom it is already at 'arm's length'

      I'm not sure if you've tried to get a new service commissioned through BT that requires some OpenReach tasks, but to me it seems like OpenReach are on Mars.

      Currently waiting for a phone number port to BT (from OpenReach), each submission takes 22 days before knowing if rejected or accepted (this is automated apparently). Currently had 3 rejections, fingers crossed aye.

      1. A Non e-mouse Silver badge

        Re: Points to Openreach and tells Ofcom it is already at 'arm's length'

        Currently waiting for a phone number port to BT (from OpenReach)

        I don't think that's Openreach but something like BT Operate.

        I believe Openreach only deal in the physical cabling. Other divisions deal with the minor details of running ADSL or telephony services.

        1. takingthemick

          Re: Points to Openreach and tells Ofcom it is already at 'arm's length'

          It's complicated :-) Porting numbers to BT SIP (OpenReach involvement) from a Virgin service half provided by OpenReach (Somehow). To be honest I hate phoning up, it gets more complex the more questions I ask. I've ported lots of numbers and moved lots of circuits over the years and it never ceases to amaze me the new problems that arise, I thought I'd seen them all.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Points to Openreach and tells Ofcom it is already at 'arm's length'

        Currently waiting for a phone number port to BT (from OpenReach), each submission takes 22 days before knowing if rejected or accepted (this is automated apparently). Currently had 3 rejections, fingers crossed aye.

        Number porting is a nightmare. I've been waiting three months for a port, but I've heard of much worse. The pain is when the port request gets rejected, you rarely get a meaningful explanation of why the port request was rejected. (That, of course, is assuming they tell you that the port request was rejected, rather than you finding out on the day that it didn't happen...)

  3. zaax

    Last year Openreach made £2.6billion of profits.

    If this was ploughed back in to broadband we would be well on our way to ultra fast broadband

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      That works out at £98 per home in the UK, ignoring all the business premises. I'm not sure it would go all that far - global experience is that a full fibre rollout costs about £2k per connected building.

      1. A Non e-mouse Silver badge

        Last year Openreach made £2.6billion of profits.

        Where did you get that from? The article says BT (as a whole) made a profit of £862 Million on revenue of £4.6 Billion.

        If Openreach is making a profit of £2.6 billion, some part of BT is making a *huge* loss.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          The press release shows £419m before pensions and other costs. There are 30m buildings in the UK.

          That's just shy of £15 for each premises. £5 a month.

          How much do you think it costs to install a fibre network?

  4. ukgnome

    Does this mean an improved coverage in some of those awkward parts of the country - namely most of it?

    1. Anonymous Coward
  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "The company said Openreach had connected a net 494,000 new customers"

    How many were they meant to connect though?...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      How many were they meant to connect though?...

      Now that is the question that no one is supposed to ask!

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Pirate

      I reckon that's in the order of 1% fulfilment

      So at this heroic rate we should all be hooked up after around 100yrs and £260Bn of profit (not adjusted for inflation)

      It's like GPO never got the memo

    3. Martin Summers Silver badge

      I'm still waiting for a leased line signed off in November and given an estimated completion date (after pushing for even that update) of 8th of January. No digging anywhere near us let alone near the exchange. Getting utterly sick of Openreach and their complete lack of interest and information unless you chase them for it.

      1. takingthemick

        I hope its not in Central London your waiting, documentation is all out of date. Our circuit install was all done within the building and to the street and needed connecting to a node, then spent 6 months of engineers going to nodes and there was no capacity unlike the documentation stated.

        Ended up moving into new office on backup EFM circuit, fibre connected two month later

        1. Martin Summers Silver badge

          Thankfully not central London. Out in the sticks a bit but well over the 46 days they say it will take. It's a straight run from the exchange and they knew full well ducts and digging would be involved. No one can be bothered to actually tell me what's going on.

  6. jaycee331

    Bye EE

    Just the reminder I needed to move my personal and business mobiles to a new provider.

    Because I wouldn't give BT the steam off my piss*

    *Unless where forced to indirectly, via their virtual-honestly-not-a-monopoly-guv.

  7. Wildchild

    Arms reach! My rusty ring piece

    I suppose if Openreach is now a fully "at arms length" company, joe public will be able to contact them and arrange for a nice new fast, reliable internet connection.

    Oh wait - that would be sensible, this is BT we are talking about of course we will not be able to talk to Openreach directly, after all why would we want to do that???

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Arms reach! My rusty ring piece

      There was a consultation on that very recently. Openreach asked for the rules to be changed so that direct contact with end customers could be permitted, as having to do everything via the customer's Telco seems to be quite inefficient.

      The telcos rejected it outright.

      The same thing happened when Openreach was set up. There was an alternate proposal where customers could buy last miles from Openreach directly and then buy services from telcos and ISPs to run over the top. That was rejected too - the telcos add money to the rental charge from Openerach to increase profits. That couldn't happen if you rented the line directly from Openreach.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Headmaster

        Re: Arms reach! My rusty ring piece

        Alternative. Alternate is a verb.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Arms reach! My rusty ring piece

          Alternate is a noun, an adjective and a verb, with a different pronunciation for the verb usage. As a noun it has a slightly different meaning to alternative.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Alternative and alternate are different words.

    One may have several alternatives to follow but only one alternate. Alternate is binary and alternative isn't. The latter allows for selection from one of a unknown number of possible states, the former allows only for the current state or a single other state.

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