BT Group UK Reportedly Edges Closer to Sale of Global Division
Telecoms and broadband giant BT Group has reportedly begun the process of making their ‘Global’ division available for sale, either in whole or in pieces. The international arm of the business, which is overseen by Business CEO Bas Burger, typically sells internet, phone and other business solutions to over 1,000 multinational corporate clients worldwide.
According to This is Money, BT Global has suffered a fall in profitability over recent years and is claimed to be difficult to value, with the division generating around £2.4bn in revenue last year and £500m in earnings, but little cash flow (they sell a lot of legacy services that aren’t super profitable). BT’s CEO, Allison Kirkby, is said to now be strongly in favour of selling the business, which is an approach that has been on the cards as one potential option since earlier this year.
Industry analysts have previously pointed toward several potential suitors, such as US rival Verizon, as well as technology giants like Amazon and Microsoft. But it could also be sold in pieces, with some reports indicating that Macquarie-backed Viatel was sniffing around BT Ireland, while Telecom Italia is said to have expressed an interest in the remnants of BT’s Italian business. BT said: ‘It could be one transaction, whichever option maximises value.’
Advertisement
The sale of their global division would no doubt help to support the operator’s UK plans, such as with their ongoing roll-out of Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband technology across the UK and their related deployments of 5G based mobile networks for EE.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
« City Focused UK ISP Hyperoptic Launch Black Friday Broadband Discounts
New Vodafone 5G Mast Design Could Cut Number of UK Masts »
It seems to me that BT are retreating to its core businesses of Openreach wholesale network, BT/EE retail ISP and mobile. The recent deal with Sky to sell Sky Stream probably spells the end of its own TV platform.
Yes, giving the hard sell on practically free (9.99/pm) broadband when taken with a EE mobile contract.
They should sell Openreach, so it is separate and not have anything to do with BT.
And that’s why you’re not a CEO
Openreach is already a separate company, with it’s own company house details – OFCOM enforced this a few years ago
If you notice Openreach had to completely rebrand all their uniforms, vans etc and have no BT logo present at all – speaking as an ex employee
They already have to operate separate I.e.no preferential treatment. No good selling their most valuable asset.
@Ad47uk Why on earth would they sell Openreach, which is the most profitable part of BT Group?
Nothing to do with it apart from being by far its biggest customer, you mean?
Those who say that BT and Openreach are separate need to take the blinkers off, they still belong to the BT group, so still have the same people on the board.
openreach should be sold off to a different company or go back to being under government control.
BT Global Services also provides a number of essential services to other companies within the BT Group, such as BT Business/Wholesale/Enterprise (or whatever BT is calling that company this week!) and Openreach, which allow/help them deliver their company-specific product sets.
I can see envisage a potentially dramatic drop in the quality of delivery across the entire BT Group, once this company is sold off. It will be interesting to see how this all turns out long term.
I really don’t understand why British companies prefer to sell bits of themselves off rather than develop new functions to sell.
I worked for BT in the 1990’s on 2 really exciting projects – Call Minder (the system base answering machine) and a system tool to cope with repetitious call tasks. Both sold off before ever fully going into service. Even worked on integrating the 0800 Number cruncher that went into service in the latter part of that decade – a porting to UNIX of the MCI (BT partner company) Platform.
They screwed up buying MCI. Gordon Brown didn’t help any UK Telecoms company with the 3G spectrum auction – that caused BT to split into 2 (BT for landline, O2 previously Cellnet of mobile).
Ever since BT seems to have a death wish – anything that takes a little effort, especially with engineering bounce is sold off for short term profit. One could ask what is BT labs doing today? are they doing any R&D work?
https://www.bt.com/about/bt/research-and-development
Verizon bought MCI, not BT