BT Ireland reported a 14pc rise in second quarter revenues thanks to significant deals in its business and wholesale divisions.
New contracts signed include an agreement with Sky Ireland to transport all of its IP core internet traffic and new data centre contracts with LinkBermuda and ICON plc.
The company said it has made strategic investments in its data centre, cloud portfolio, IP voice, network monitoring and management infrastructure.
The company has also been added to the Irish Government’s voice framework.
BT Ireland said that the financial performance of BT Sport Europe has been better than expected and viewing figures have also been strong, up 47pc year-on-year
“Our all-island BT Ireland performance for the quarter is strong, with underlying top and bottom line growth,” BT Ireland CEO Colm O’Neill said.
“Success this quarter was driven by increased revenue from our major customers, both multinational and wholesale, the continued uptake of fibre broadband across Northern Ireland and ongoing cost management across the business.
“In the Republic of Ireland, the unrivalled strength of our global network capability and local expertise continues to deliver for us in the global MNC market as we secured a number of major new deals in the year to date and we’ve made strategic investments in our data centre, our network and our cloud service portfolio to support our continued drive for growth.”
Fibre and people are a priority for BT Group plc
BT Ireland’s parent company BT Group plc reported Q2 revenues of £4.3bn, which was flat year-on-year, and EBITDA of £1.4bn.
CEO Gavin Patterson said the company continues to invest heavily in people and fibre.
“Fibre broadband is a success story and we continue to invest heavily to help the UK remain a broadband leader among major European nations,” Patterson said.
“Our open-access fibre network now passes 24m premises and we are not stopping there. We want to get fibre broadband to as many people as possible and we are also pushing ahead with our plans to get ultrafast broadband to 10m premises by the end of 2020. Market-wide demand for fibre remains strong with fibre net additions up 21pc as we hit the 5m milestone for homes and businesses connected.
“We’ve seen good demand for BT Sport Europe and this has helped us add a record number of BT TV customers in the quarter. Its contribution has been better than we expected, helping drive a 7pc increase in BT Consumer revenue. Mobile is another growth area and I am pleased our consumer customer base now stands at more than 200,000. And I am also pleased that, yesterday, the Competition and Markets Authority provisionally approved our planned acquisition of EE, unconditionally without remedies.”
Patterson said the telecoms giant is also working to improve customer service as part of a group-wide programme.
“Openreach’s recently launched ‘View my Engineer’ service is going down well. The 3,000 engineers we hired in the last 18 months are helping us fix faults faster and provide new services sooner.
“We have also created more than 1,000 new contact centre jobs in the UK, with hundreds more to come, to meet our 2016 commitment for more than 80pc of consumer customer calls to be answered in the UK. And we have plans to go even further in years to come,” Patterson added.
BT Tower image via Shutterstock
