BT 2014 Annual Report Download - page 14

11
Overview
Overview
The best network provider
Openreach is becoming a bre business. Our
bre broadband network is available to over
19m premises, up from 15m in March 2013.
And we are playing our part in building Britains
connected future, helping businesses to grow
andcommunities to prosper.
The number of premises taking bre almost doubled in the year.
There are now over 2.7m connections, 14% of those passed. We have
started to roll out bre in rural communities, supported by public
funding from the Broadband Delivery U (BDU) programme. We
hired around 2,000 people this year to deliver the new infrastructure,
connect bre customers and improveour service. But the extreme
levels of rainfall led to higher than expected volumes of network faults,
and increased the time to repair them. Our service in the year was
not good enough. We are investing to improve the resilience of our
network and to meet customers changing expectations.
The number of physical lines increased by 83,000 in the year.
Thenumber of copper and bre broadband users on our network
rose 826,000. We also saw further growth in our business-grade
Ethernet services, with the number of circuits growing 14%. Revenue
in Openreach declined 1%, and EBITDA declined 2%, as the impact of
regulation oset growth in bre broadband and Ethernet revenue.
Our bre network now covers around two thirds of U premises. During the 2013 Children in eed telethon we handled 245,000 calls with
over 700 BT people volunteering to answer phones on the night.
A responsible and
sustainablebusiness leader
Being a responsible and sustainable business
leader remains at the heart of our strategy and
underpins BTs purpose. It supports our goal to
deliver sustainable, protable revenue growth,
while ensuring we maximise the contribution
wemake to society and the environment.
Our Better Future programme helps us achieve this  through our
people, products and operations. We demonstrate good business
practice and maintain high ethical standards in our supply chain.
We have made good progress towards our ambitious 2020 goals in
our three focus areas Connected Society, et Good and Improving
ives. We increased coverage of bre broadband and provided free
programmes to help people develop their digital skills. We reduced our
own energy use and carbon emissions, while enabling our customers to
reduce theirs. We helped charities raise millions for good causes with
huge support from BT volunteers.
<ou can ƬnG out more about the %etter Future 2020 goals
our methoGologies anG how our results are calculateG at
wwwbtcombetterfuture
Our 2020 goals 2013/14 performance
Connected Society
More than 910 people in the U
will have access to bre-based
products and services
6.610 people can access
bre-based products and services
Net Good
elp our customers reduce carbon
emissions by at least threetimes
the end-to-end carbon impact of
our business
1.31 achieved against our
2020 goal of 31
Improving Lives
Use our skills and technology to
help generate more than £1bn
forgood causes
Over £85m raised for good
causes
BT people volunteered over
46,000 days
Total premises passed with Ƭbre
At 31 March
million
0
12
9
6
3
15
18
21
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014