1. Billing progress report July 2010
2. Provision progress report August 2010
3. Repair progress report March 2010

1. Billing progress report July 2010
2. Repair progress report August 2010
3. New online reports: track our progress on what’s really important to you

It’s not often that we win awards, and even rarer that we do for our innovative product launches, so it was great not only for BT Wholesale to win the ITSPA award for Most Innovative VoIP Product for IP Exchange but also for us to receive such great industry accolades for our launch of IP Voice Services. These both signal how important the channel has become and the extent to which BT has become an ‘active friend’ to the channel.

Of course, it has also been a tough time for business-focused data and Internet service providers. The General Election, Wimbledon, the World Cup and a host of less popular events have been quietly streaming video to office desktops across the country, driving both cost and service issues.

At the same time, exponential growth in VoIP and desktop videoconferencing means many business customers are now also desperate for faster upstream speeds, without using costly SDSL or leased line Internet solutions.

In another significant move, Annex M was launched last month on BT’s 21CN broadband products, alongside copper and fibre-based Ethernet products. When coupled with our Dynamic Line Management technology, Annex M offers high speed and stability from a broadband line.

I believe that flexibility – whether it be flexing bandwidth or collapsing voice, data and video onto one access point – is now a key competitive differentiator in the converging world of the broadband mixed economy.

The differences between broadband and Ethernet services are becoming blurred, and where once it was all about technology, the emphasis is now on you and your customers selecting from a spectrum of access technologies, using cost, capability and service levels.

There are a number of new entrants into the marketplace, and our mission is to help resellers find a competitive way through the quagmire!

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1. How SME’s value ICT
2. Broadband investment drives business productivity and growth

1. Customer satisfaction update
2. Finance Customer Managers take in bigger picture to give better service
3. New SOR progress alerts to keep innovators informed

1. New to Wholesale
2. A fresh new look
3. BT Wholesale Roadmaps

You can find the update as a download on the right hand side of the page. If you are logged in and wish to make any comments or observations about the update, please feel free to use the comments box below.

1. Provision progress report August 2010
2. Repair progress report August 2010
3. ‘User friendly’ improvements for VIC Capacity Management Reports and BT Wholesale Ethernet bills

Sally Davis, CEO, BT Wholesale.

This month we celebrate the second anniversary of The Loop. It’s an occasion that gives me an ideal opportunity to review the changes and advances of the past 24 months and look ahead.

Our industry faces major challenges. Some, such as the need to reduce costs, existed two years ago, but have been heightened by the global economic downturn. Our industry continues to consolidate in the face of a new generation of competitors entering the market armed with radically different business models and lower costs of entry. The need to continually improve service quality has never been greater as customer expectations keep rising in today’s 24/7 society.

But the market in which we operate has seen some fundamental changes in the last couple of years, which present both challenges and opportunities. The first is the mainstream adoption of carrier grade Internet Protocol. IP has gone from a niche technology to a mainstream service enabler.

The next big challenge is the explosive growth in the distribution and delivery of digital video content across both fixed and mobile networks. Four years ago 100 million videos were watched on YouTube every day. It is two billion today. The BBC’s iPlayer launched in December 2007.  It now delivers over 120 million requests every day which adds up to 7 petabytes of data a month.

As a result of this, the volume of data carried by mobile operators has risen twentyfold over the last two years, and is forecast to grow almost as much again in the next two years. The figures for fixed operators are less dramatic but still very significant.

Cloud computing is finally coming of age. Gartner forecast that by 2012 20% of all businesses will own no IT assets.  That will not only further increase bandwidth demand but will also make high levels of service reliability ever more essential.

We are committed to working really closely with you to ensure our portfolio, delivered over copper and increasingly, fibre, meets your needs in this rapidly evolving market – and, as always, you can rely on The Loop to keep you briefed on what’s new and important to you and your customers.

Yours sincerely,

Sally Davis
CEO, BT Wholesale

1. Keeping you informed, keeping you ahead: The Loop one year on
2. A tough year amidst a market undergoing dynamic change
3. Meet the people: the Finance & Customer Management team

How are your customers using broadband to power their business? The surge in new must-have applications like VoIP and video transfers means many are likely to want faster upstream speeds as well as high quality and reliability. And with our introduction of Annex M on 2 August 2010 that’s exactly what you can give them.

Annex M is the latest addition to our next generation broadband Wholesale Broadband Connect (WBC) copper service. Expand your portfolio with it and immediately you’re in a better position to tailor – and differentiate – your broadband services by matching them more precisely to the needs of individual businesses. That’s because through Annex M your customers can choose to boost their upstream line rate by trading off a small element of their downstream rate.

It’s an option that will be particularly attractive to small and midsize companies that want to advance to the cost-cutter efficiencies of IP voice and IP video conferencing and transfer big data files faster. And dependability is built in to protect all those business-critical applications. Annex M comes complete with a Service Level Guarantee (SLG). It means you – and your customers – can be sure of an upstream IP throughput of 85% of the line’s synchronisation speed* every working day: 8am to 5pm, Monday to Friday (excluding UK Public and Bank Holidays).

Annex M is just one of a number of broadband developments to help you deliver an ever better customer experience and grow your sales in the mixed economy marketplace.

Next in the pipeline for August and September 2010 are a Service Level Guarantee for our copper WBC Elevated Best Effort service, a brand new 7-hour repair option and more choices for your customers – including customer wiring and equipment modules – when you need to book an SFI (Special Faults Investigation) visit from a broadband engineer. Saturday, early morning and early evening appointments will be on offer in addition to the current Monday-to-Friday AM and PM slots.

* This is a rate adaptive service and, using Dynamic Line Management, each line automatically settles or ‘synchronises’ offering end users the highest stable rate their line can support.

GET MORE>

Read more about Annex M at our Product Roadmaps page here.

Check out your growth potential with Wholesale Broadband Connect (WBC) here.

Find out why a no-fly strategy makes VoIP a hot buy for UK SMEs – and how our new IP Voice Services could lead them to you. It’s in this issue here.

Your account management team will be pleased to tell you more.

Look out for news of our other broadband product developments and service improvements as they go live. We’ll report in The Loop.

1. IPv6 addressing and WBC: it’s all systems go
2. New exchange list pinpoints fresh 21CN sales scope
3. 21CN broadband: 1 million users already – and 61% coverage planned by Winter 2010

Did your customers’ businesses seize up when snowdrifts hit the UK earlier this year? If they didn’t, they were in a tiny minority.

According to a survey by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI)*, 93% of companies suffered some disruption due to staff, goods, customers and suppliers being stuck in the wrong place. Yet the CMI also found that less than 50% have an adequate recovery plan to get them out of trouble when disaster strikes.

One answer could be as close as BT Wholesale’s new IP Voice Services (IPVS) – as BT Wholesale customer and IPVS triallist Swains plc have already recognised. They supply tailored fixed line voice services to SME, corporate and public sector customers and have a reputation for creating real solutions to customers’ problems, as well as using the technologies they sell in their own operations. And IPVS’s clear potential for business continuity has emerged from their own experience.

This fully managed VoIP service offers two options. Firstly, there are SIP trunks which Swains can use to connect a customer’s existing PBX to the telephone network via IP. Secondly, there’s hosted IP which uses IP Centrex technology to deliver VoIP services to businesses without the need for a PBX. For their own use, Swains have combined the two to create the ideal protection should anything go wrong with their own systems. This was put to the test when their ISDN lines went down at the local exchange. By simply programming their PBX, Swains were able to switch over to their SIP trunks at the touch of a button.

Swains have also harnessed the hosted IP Centrex option to manage their development team’s everyday communication needs. Using IP phones in the office and at home has given the team access to geographical numbers and the ability to transfer calls, all from the handset itself. So next time something happens to stop people getting to work, there’s no need to stop business.

* Source: “Disruption & Resilience: the 2010 Business Continuity Management Survey (March 2010)”: CMI report available to download free here.

GET MORE>

Find out how IPVS is giving Swains and other BT Wholesale customers the edge in the VoIP market. Head to our IPVS 3D Knowledge Hub to read our case studies and see a video clip.

Read how a no-fly strategy makes VoIP a hot buy for UK SMEs. It’s in this issue here.

Offering VoIP handsets could give you even greater sales potential. Check out the wide choice of equipment we offer for easy online ordering 24/7 at our eCatalogue: www.btecatalogue.com

Or contact your account management team.

1. SMEs fly with VoIP, not planes
2. “Stability, cost effectiveness, national coverage” make new BT Plusnet Partner Broadband the right choice for Vertical Group
3. Faster changes of address and anti-slamming moves for Wholesale Calls