Categories: NetworksWorkspace

Fibre Demand Boosts BT Results In Record Quarter For Openreach

Strong demand for superfast broadband services and the continuing appeal of its sports television channels boosted BT’s third quarter revenues to £4.6 billion as UK ISPs added a record 339,000 new and upgrading customers to the open access Openreach fibre network.

BT itself was responsible for around 226,000, a third of which were entirely new customers, increasing its fibre customer base to 1.9 million and the number of premises served by Openreach to 2.4 million.

In total, 252,000 entirely new customers were added to the Openreach copper and fibre networks, bringing the Openreach total to 18.238 million premises and BT’s total customer base to 7.1 million.

BT Results

BT reported profits of £617 million before tax, an increase of six percent, however while revenues for the nine months leading up to December 2013 were flat at £13.6 billion, pre-tax profits were down by seven percent. BT CEO Gavin Patterson is convinced that the company’s continued investment in fibre and premium sports rights is justified.

“Our strategic investments are delivering. It was another record quarter for fibre take-up and there are now more than 18 million premises with access to our fibre,” he said. “That number will grow further as the Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) programme progresses.

“Fibre helps SMEs to compete and underpins our TV plans. Our direct BT Sport customer base passed 2.5 million in the quarter and helped to support 6% revenue growth in our Consumer business. We achieved some particularly strong audience figures in December and the exclusive rights to the UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League that we have won will further strengthen the appeal of our proposition.”

BT has so far won all of the government funding available under BDUK and a number of projects have started to go live with 300,000 homes and businesses now having access to fibre as a direct result of the initiative.

The scheme has come under scrutiny because of the company’s heavy involvement, but outgoing Openreach CEO Liv Garfield has defended BT’s role in the roll-out, calling it “massively frustrating” to have to deal with criticism because in her opinion, it was going quite well.

Do you know the history of BT? Try our quiz!

Steve McCaskill

Steve McCaskill is editor of TechWeekEurope and ChannelBiz. He joined as a reporter in 2011 and covers all areas of IT, with a particular interest in telecommunications, mobile and networking, along with sports technology.

Recent Posts

OpenAI ‘Finalising Design’ For In-House AI Chip

OpenAI reportedly set to finalise design for first in-house AI chip within months, putting it…

9 hours ago

DeepSeek Ends Promotional API Pricing Amidst Demand Surge

Chinese AI start-up DeepSeek discontinues promotional pricing for V3 large language model as demand surge…

10 hours ago

Researchers Deliver High-Performance AI Model For Under $50

US researchers say innovative technique delivers performance beating recent OpenAI model with training costs of…

10 hours ago

BYD To Equip Nearly All EVs With Driving Automation

World's biggest EV maker BYD to bring advanced self-driving features to nearly all vehicles, in…

11 hours ago

International Tensions Surface At Paris AI Summit

China representative at AI Action Summit says tensions with US hindering safety efforts, trades barbs…

11 hours ago

France, EU Promise Simplified Regulation For AI Growth

At AI Action Summit, French president Macron, EU digital chief promise to 'simplify' red tape…

21 hours ago