BT’s Q4 results, released this morning, show that its new wave revenue – comprising networked IT, mobility and broadband – has continued to grow and is 28% higher than last year, at £1,851 million.
Networked IT services revenue grew by 22% to £1,214 million, broadband revenue increased by 44% to £421 million and mobility revenue increased by 41% to £82 million.
The group had broadband net additions of 0.8 million, of which BT Retail’s share was 31%, and over the year BT had 7.9 million broadband end users, a rise of 58%.
BT chief executive, Ben Verwaayen, said: “BT is now a truly global company, delivering services to more than 170 countries with more than 20% of our networked IT services contract wins outside the UK. BT lines now carry 8 million broadband connections and we have started rolling out speeds of up to 8 Mbits.
“BT has changed very significantly from 4 years ago, and the transformation is accelerating.”
Revenue from traditional lines and calls was down by 3% over the year with BT blaming the decline on regulatory intervention, competition, price reductions and technological changes used to push customers from traditional services to new wave services.
Over the year BT’s total revenue rose by 6%, with a 7% rise in Q4.
Mike Cansfield, head of telecoms strategy with analyst and communications company Ovum, said: “As well as it does to generate new revenues to replace the declining traditional calls and lines business, there must be questions regarding its long term strategy.
“In our view its lack of a mobile business is a significant inhibitor to how far the business can grow in the long term. Convergence is a big driver in the industry at the moment, of which fixed-mobile convergence is a part. Without a mobile business BT has little to converge.”
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