BT Expands on Indian Subcontinent

BT EXPANDS ON INDIAN SUBCONTINENT

BT leads market for Indian enterprise communications

New Delhi, September 11, 2007 –BT today announced the increase of connecting points (nodes) for its multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) infrastructure, which is the basis for high quality video and voice services over the internet, bringing the number to 14 in India.

Six cities including New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai and Pune will have multiple nodes plus an additional one in Kolkatta, making BT the global network IT service provider with the highest number of connecting points in India. BT’s network capabilities will be further extended with Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka receiving independent nodes by the end of April 2008.

Special equipped nodes in Chennai, New Delhi and Mumbai will help BT’s media and broadcast customers in India to deliver their content to a global audience and be more cost effective. It also allows them to distribute and edit content across regions, which in return provides more effective disaster recovery and continuity planning.

BT India has witnessed unprecedented growth and customer demand over the last three years seeing growth in bandwidth of over seven times and nodes by five times. 

Allen Ma, president, BT Asia Pacific, said “We are being recognised by the industry and our customers as a truly global software-driven services organisation. This is due to our concerted efforts of getting closer to our customer which enables greater collaboration. With our increased presence in India we are gearing up to gain access to tier two and three cities.”

 “Our greatest challenge in India is to ensure that our services and operations exceed customer needs and satisfaction at all times. Our plans for India are well on track and we are poised to reach our USD 250 million target by 2009,” he further added.

The investment in new nodes demonstrates BT's commitment to its multi-national customer base. These customers are demanding a globally consistent set of services with high levels of security, redundancy, cost-efficiency and reliability. The expansion of BT’s MPLS network in India enables more companies to maximize their benefits from BT’s global networked IT capability in the areas of convergence, CRM and security around the globe.

Arun Seth, chairman & managing Director of BT India, said, “With leadership position in the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) sector firmly established, BT is now extending its horizon to Indian multinationals going global with specific focus on Banking, Financial services, Media, Broadcast, Pharmaceuticals, IT and Hospitality sectors. The challenge for BT in India is to stay ahead of the game. With our licenses we can now provide local billing and service management for multi site corporate customers in Asia Pacific from our Customer Network Management Centre (CNOC) in Pune.”

ENDS

Note to Editors:

BT's global 21CN is expanding quickly, adding a new city around the world every week. BT believes its next-generation network to be the broadest, richest and most resilient in the world, enabling companies and organisations to instantly trade across the globe with high speed and great resilience. In the past three years, BT in Asia Pacific has invested more than US$100 million in expanding its regional network.  In February 2006, BT announced a US$21 million investment in a global IP-based voice platform which will see the current legacy TDM network replaced by an MPLS-based network across over 30 countries worldwide. A significant portion of this is planned to be invested in India.

About BT India

BT's India operations are run through various companies part of the BT Group plc, a leading provider of communications solutions and services. BT Telecom India Pvt Ltd was established pursuant to a joint venture agreement with Jubilant Enpro Pvt. Ltd., in December, 2006.  In February 2007, BT was granted International Long Distance and National Long Distance license by the Government of India.  These licenses place BT as one of the largest service providers in the country, focusing on delivering global services including voice, CRM, ATM (asynchronous transfer mode communications), FR (Frame Relay) and MPLS (multi-protocol label switching). 

These services support the needs and requirements of our multi-site corporate customers and Indian customers looking to take their operations to a global audience. In June 2007, BT completed the acquisition of BT Global Communications India Private Limited (formerly i2i Enterprise Pvt Ltd), an enterprise services company specializing in internet protocol (IP) communications services for major Indian and global multinational companies.

BT India is headquartered in New Delhi and has a network presence in eight key business locations across India including Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Noida, Gurgaon, Pune, Chennai and Kolkata. BT currently employs 20,000 people - directly and indirectly, in India.

About BT

BT is one of the world’s leading providers of communications solutions and services operating in 170 countries.  Its principal activities include networked IT services; local, national and international telecommunications services; higher-value broadband and internet products and services and converged fixed/mobile products and services.  BT consists principally of four lines of business: BT Global Services, Openreach, BT Retail and BT Wholesale.

In the year ended 31 March 2007, BT Group plc’s revenue was £20,223 million with profit before taxation of £2,484 million.

British Telecommunications plc (BT) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of BT Group and encompasses virtually all businesses and assets of the BT Group.  BT Group plc is listed on stock exchanges in London and New York. 

For more information, visit www.bt.com/aboutbt