BT 2012 Annual Report Download - page 25

22 Strategy
Chief Executive’s introduction
biggest engineering projects the UK has
ever seen with 3,000 full time BT engineers
involved today. We’ve also recruited hundreds
of former Armed Forces personnel to join a
mobile team of engineers to help speed up the
roll-out.
With further investment from BT,
supplemented with funds from Government’s
Broadband Delivery UK initiative, local
government and other sources, we believe it is
possible to provide fibre to around 90% of UK
premises infive years’ time.
We remain the leading provider of broadband
in the UK, with more than 6m customers.
Our copper line base has seen the largest
increase in many years as customers recognise
the advantages of fixed-line broadband.
Consumers are increasingly looking for
competitively priced bundles of broadband
services that combine telephony and TV.
Our BT Vision service now has over 700,000
customers, up 23% on last year.
Increasingly people want to be connected
when they’re on the move, and our UK
customers can now use one of BT’s more than
4m wi-fi hotspots to access the internet when
away from home.
At a time when many of our corporate
customers are facing their own challenges,
our investments internationally will help
those seeking to expand in faster growing
economies. We’ve increased BT’s presence in
the Asia Pacific region and in Latin America;
and we recently embarked on a series of
initiatives in Turkey, the Middle East and
Africa – aimed at doubling our business
there. The total order intake for our global
business was £6.7bn during the year with an
over 60% increase in orders from these faster
growingeconomies.
We aim to provide the best service in the
market and our ‘right first time’ programme
remains at the core of our service improvement
programme. We continue to reduce complaints
and improve service levels. However, we still
have more to do and next year we aim to
introduce a number of improvements that
will cut fault rates, improve our customers’
experience when they call us, and provide our
services more quickly.
In common with other European telecoms
companies, we are experiencing both
economic and regulatory headwinds. A
number of regulatory rulings are expected to
impact group revenue in the year ahead and
it is clear that the economy across most of
Europe will remain difficult.
That said, we remain committed to becoming
a growing business. We expect to continue to
deliver higher profits and cash flow while we
invest in future growth. Good execution and a
commitment to investing in our future remain
at the core of what we will do. We are focused
on building a better business for the long term.
Thank you for your support.
Ian Livingston
Chief Executive
9 May 2012
In what remains
a challenging
environment we have
delivered another year
of growth in profits and
free cash flow.
Watch my video online at
www.bt.com/annualreport
In this year’s annual report we explain how we
are building a better business and investing for
the future. I’d like to highlight the areas where
we have made good progress, and those where
we know there is more to do.
In what remains a challenging environment
we have delivered another year of growth
in profits and free cash flow. While it is more
difficult to grow revenue, we are making
progress towards that goal.
We have now passed 10m homes and
businesses with our fibre roll-out, many
months ahead of schedule. It’s one of the
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