BT wants a million VoIP users within a year
July 28th, 2006 - Posted in VoIPBT IS SEEKING to recruit a million net voice customers inside 12 months in an attempt to precede the inevitable decline in its fixed-line revenues and head off a wave of competition.
According to a report in The Times, the telecoms behemoth said that one in 10 of its voice customers could be VoIP users inside two years. Heavy marketing and the likely inclusion of net calling hardware and software in its broadband services are likely tactics to attract subscribers.
The statement might help reduce the suspicion that BT would somehow gouge existing users rather than admit the market is changing and make its broadband suite a more attractive deal. Making voice-over-net an integral service could also help shore up BT’s falling share in broadband adoption. Numbers of new broadband customers going to BT are declining sharply, analysts noted.
Competition in UK broadband is intense now with Sky launching its service, Orange cutting tariffs and Carphone Warehouse appearing to have a huge hit on its hands with the Talk Talk ‘Free Broadband’ package.
It might not be “free” and it might have a lot of customers queued up rather than live, but Charles Dunstone’s company has received 476,000 applications for the new service. Of these, 247,000 are live on broadband and 303 exchanges have been unbundled. The progress helped Talk Talk UK grow revenues by 228 percent year on year.
Some watchers might quibble over how “free” the service is, given the various caveats of the package, and others note that it will take time to get everybody who has signed up on the service, but already the service looks a winner and Dunstone is talking a good game when it comes to potential snags and snares.
“On the customer service side, there is no doubt that we initially underestimated the strength of demand,” he said.
“We have expanded our customer service capacity substantially since June to meet this additional demand, and this is now having a noticeable effect. In turn, this has enabled us to increase significantly the rate at which we are provisioning customers onto broadband. We still have some way to go, however, to reach the leading service levels we target, and I take personal responsibility for ensuring we achieve these.”
Separately, BT said it has over 3,000 people working on its 21CN network refresh. Also, its broadband TV service will launch this autumn.