BT 1998 Annual Report Download - page 7

B U SI N E S S R EV I E
In February 1998, it was announced that Telfort had
won one of two new national Dutch mobile licences,
to go with the fixed line licence it already holds. Initial
coverage, which will start at the end of this year, will be
confined to metropolitan areas, but we aim for 99 per cent
national geographic coverage by the end of 1999.
BT’s new joint venture in Switzerland, Newtelco, won no
fewer than 25,000 customers in the first month when its
Sunrise service opened for business in January 1998.
Jointly owned by BT, TeleDanmark, Swiss railways, Union
Bank of Switzerland and the retail giant Migros, Sunrise
means that, for the first time, Swiss customers have a
choice of telecoms supplier for some of the calls they
make outside Switzerland.
In September 1997, we completed our deal to take
a 26 per cent stake in Cegetel, the new French
telecommunications group which, in 1997, had revenues
of over £1 billion. Cegetel will provide the full range of
telecommunications services – both fixed and mobile –
and is already positioned to be the main competitor to
France Telecom. Cegetel’s fixed network service was
launched at the beginning of February 1998 and, in the
first two months, attracted around 140,000 customers.
It also holds a majority stake in SFR, the number two
mobile operator in France, with more than 2.5 million
customers and a market share of approximately
40 per cent of new subscribers.
In Spain, our fixed line operator – BT Telecomunicaciones
– has the second largest data network and has trebled its
revenues since it was set up in 1994. And Airtel, in which
BT has a 16 per cent stake, has more than a million
mobile customers and 40 per cent of the Spanish
digital market.
In December 1997, BT and the Electricity Supply Board
in the Republic of Ireland announced that they had
reached agreement in principle to form a joint venture to
offer communications services in Ireland, one of western
Europe’s fastest growing economies.
Asia-Pacific
The Asia-Pacific telecommunications market is one
of the fastest growing in the world, and BT already has
offices or ventures in Japan, China, Taiwan, South Korea,
Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines,
Australia, New Zealand and India.
Because we believe that in international business it is
essential to think global but act local, we have already
moved fast in many countries to establish ourselves,
with our partners, as the major alternative to the
incumbent operators.
We have built partnerships or established distributorships
in each of the markets that are opening up. Typically, our
partners have not been other telecoms operators but local
companies with strong reputations and experience which
complements our own. In Germany, our main partner is
Viag, a major energy and industrial group with whom we
have formed Viag Interkom; in France, we have teamed
up with a group headed by Vivendi to form Cegetel. In
Italy, we have partnered with energy group ENI, media
organisation Mediaset, and Banca Nazionale del Lavoro
to form Albacom; and in the Netherlands we have formed
Telfort in partnership with the state railway company
Nederlandse Spoorwegen.
In total, our ventures cover 85 per cent of the EU market.
We have already invested almost £2 billion in European
ventures and expect to make further substantial
investments over the next few years.
In Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland,
Ireland and Sweden we, alone or in partnership, already
have licences to run fixed line services, and we
will benefit from mobile network licences in Germany,
France, the Netherlands, and Spain too. In other
countries, bidding for licences is still in progress.
BT’s major European alliances
•France Cegetel
•Germany Viag Interkom
•Italy Albacom
•Netherlands Telfort
•Spain Airtel
•Sweden Telenordia
•Switzerland Sunrise