Strategic Shift as BT No Longer Being Ditched as UK Consumer Brand
Broadband and telecoms giant BT appears to have confirmed that their strategy of turning EE into the group’s “flagship brand for our consumer customers”, which was eventually expected to result in the BT brand focusing more on business customers, will no longer result in the original brand being retired for consumer products.
Just to recap. Back in April 2022 the BT Group announced a significant and surprising change in their branding strategy (here), which sought simplification (i.e. no more having “two of everything“) by turning EE into their “flagship brand” for most consumer customers, while BT would become the main brand for their Enterprise and Global units. In addition, Plusnet would have continued to “serve customers with basic no-frills broadband and landline” (although they’ve opted not to offer landline phone services on FTTP).
Since then there have been a series of gradual moves to help facilitate this transition (e.g. product changes and withdrawals), although we’ve long questioned the wisdom of the operator’s approach, particularly given that the BT brand was already synonymous with home broadband and phone services. Instead, BT’s efforts to foster brand simplification always seemed destined to fuel consumer confusion.
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According to The Telegraph (paywall), the CEO of BT Group, Allison Kirkby, has now “shelved” the original re-branding strategy “amid concerns that dropping the historic brand risked alienating older customers” (this seems like a reference to their older standalone broadband and landline-only base).
A Spokesperson for BT said:
“EE is our lead consumer-facing brand for converged mobile and broadband customers but there will always be a big role for BT as one of our most highly valued brands by our customers. BT will therefore continue as part of our portfolio of well-loved consumer brands alongside EE and Plusnet.”
The report also indicates that BT will “step up its investment” in Plusnet, which seems odd given how much they’ve gutted from that service in recent years (mobile, TV, home phone etc.). But despite this, the report indicates that BT may be preparing to launch a new budget focused mobile service in the future, although it’s unclear if this will be done under Plusnet or a completely new brand.
On the one hand, we agree that the BT brand should be retained for consumer services, particularly broadband and phone. On the other hand, we’ve just spent 2-3 years on the process of transitioning consumers over to EE, and to change course now seems likely to fuel yet more confusion. Hopefully we’ll learn a bit more about exactly what BT intends to change in the near future.
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.
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Trying to figure out how to stop the AltNets and grab more customers from
VMO2…Good luck 🙂
It has got to be making some difference, not just losing customers from their ISPs (BT, EE, Plusnet) but also from their network.
I am not a fan of Virgin, but with their main network now taking wholesale and also their fibre company that is spreading, (can’t remember the name), being such a large company it has to be a threat.
Then, as you say, the smaller Alt nets. They must also make a difference, even in my street, there is around 8 houses that has Zzoomm, out of 60ish, may not seem a lot, but that is 8 less than they would get on their network.
i think as more people change from FTTC to FTTP, there will be more that will change to Zzoomm, certainly now that have gone in with Full Fibre and will at some point star selling other ISPs on the network.
Next year, by all accounts, we have the network partly owned by Virgin, maybe. Not sure how that will work out, not sure if the city is large enough for three networks, but we will see or not.
It’s worth reading the Telegraph article.
The headline is “BT brand saved amid pressure from billionaire Indian investor”.
A few relevant excerpts:
“The BT brand has been saved from the consumer scrap heap amid pressure on the company’s chief executive from a billionaire Indian investor.
[…]
The change comes amid pressure from Sunil Bharti Mittal, the Indian tycoon who became BT’s largest shareholder last summer after taking a stake of almost 25pc.
Mr Mittal has taken a hands-on approach to his investment, summoning executives for two days of strategy meetings last month. He also met with Ms Kirkby during the Mobile World Congress industry conference in Barcelona this week.
[…]”
Looks like Mittal has driven this shift in strategy.
I’d think it’s easy enough for BT to continue as a ‘mirror’ brand in the background – essentially with the same offering as EE for residential consumers, just with a different label (essentially BT would just be a ‘white label’ offering EE’s products).
The amount of money they have spent on this migration is mental to think they’re just gonna scrap it now! Like when they decided to do it I thought yeah that’s a good idea, get rid of you association to an old legacy brand, I agree they would’ve lost a few older customers but surely that is a worthy sacrifice since those customers didn’t exactly help them get into a modern brand. On top of that they were going to consolidate duplicate products savings money everywhere.
At this point scrapping it is the wrong thing, their problem is not that customers are confused by EE, it’s that the price is way too high in comparison with competitors.
Many of those “pensioners” will have spent much of their working lives on the technology that is being rolled out or yet to be activated. Don’t assume that being a pensioner means that they have no technical knowledge or experience; many will be far better informed than the general public.
Or Simply call it BT/EE for consumer and BT Business for commercial (and maybe even rebadge Plusnet as BT Plusnet as the budget offering). That would give all divisions their own identity while keeping the familiar BT brand.
That Big Dave is the best plan and comment on this that I have seen and heard.
Well done.
Your decision makes far too much sense to ever happen.
That is not how braning works. Brands are now given distinct entities to distance them from the owner and to appear to the target market sector. EE is a strong brand, so it should not be changed. I am assuming that they will be looking at a more nuanced use of the “BT” brand for consumers going forward. Branding is just that, it does not mean that eth support operations also have to be separate.
Has April fools day came early? What are BT up to seriously, getting rid of the BT brand should never have been on the cards if anything the EE brand should have taken a back seat and BT stay as the dominant brand that people know and trust.
BT/EE are never going yo expand, only lose customers that they over charged for years they also miss sold packages to millions of people like me who don’t forget or forgive.
Formally being a BT customer for 4 decades.
Now they own the EE brand they have managed to spoil it by association.
I’ve got rid of BT more than halved my broadband costs and exponentially increased my broadband speed by anything upto x5 on thier 150 fibre optic norm.
Next in my firing line is ditching EE mobile phone contract.
Rip off customers and RIP BT and EE
The BT brand has not gone away. The intent was to use the EE brand for combined services. There may be a market segment for voice-only services that could now be serviced via the “BT” brand.
There are enough problems for some changing to digital voice and full fibre to not need the EE change as well.
Finally some common sense. Why scrap BT for consumer? Always a mad plan….
Marc Allera leaving along with some of his ideas!
^ this ^
(although it’s spelt Marc AlEEra
Confusion, more like very angry what they’ve done, hours on hours silent on the phone migrating to EE from BT, the EE Smart hub drops broadband when you have a phone call on digital phone, separate accounts with broadband and mobile as they can’t merge accounts, everything worked with BT, 1 account… complete and utter shambles going to EE
Na it works but the old EE system let customers choose their names it ported in “nicknames” IE Chris on mobile but Christopher on Broadband, everyone remembers to call up and change the broadband address, but everyone forgets for their mobile. If both aren’t identical they don’t link up.
Feels like they should replace both with All Over The Place.
Not only are they watching Rome burn, they’re fanning the flames. An Omnishambles.
You don’t have to be a management consultant to work this one out.
Too many marketeers, . . . .not enough engineers.
And Too much money spent on poncing actors to justify the marketing budget and salaries.
Absolutely 100% and it all started right back at the beginning when EE was born out of the merger between Orange & T-Mobile (ex Orange Engineer here btw), we all saw the future and jumped ship, and predictably EE went down the “marketeer” driven road…. eventually falling flat and getting bought up by BT, and surprise surprise, same mentality is still there.
Getting out of the mobile comms industry in the UK was the best move I ever made!!
EE is a meaningless brand, unlike the BT brand, it has no history. I left Plusnet when they pulled the plug on business broadband. The whole thing was stupid from the outset, clueless people running the company. No matter what they call themselves, most people have long since abandoned their services due to poor service and uncompetitive pricing.
Spot on!
Who cares About History At this point as long as the company
Delivers the product well thats what matters Also EE is better for the customers it Delivers better speeds better routers etc while on the other hand with BT your stuck with wifi 5 router and 900Mbps .plusnet does the same for cheaper so there’s no reason for BT to exist as it is
Nothing meaningless about EE at all. Remember it’s an abbreviation of Everything Everywhere. The brand delivers exactly what it says on the tin. 5G with 100% UK landmass coverage and FTTP to every property in the land.
Oh, hang on.
EE is the top-rated brand amongst the UK’s multi-play service providers. It is not just aimed at wireless but at the multi-pay segment. The BT brand is more associated with voice services, and that might be the intent of the change – to brand voice-only services delivered over FTTP/C as being provided by BT.
The fact is, this is about establishing what we do most of best and finding fewer ways of doing more of it less. (Credit to W1A)
I called this mess so long ago.
BT is clearly not all roses internally. Their entire re-branding has been a disaster.
You can’t really make this stuff up! From day one they could have simply branded as BT EE or BTee.
Oh no it was Everything Everywhere…then someone realises it’s far to many letters and meaningless.So EE.
These marketing people must t be rubbing their hands with glee when this sort of clueless chumps need their help.
I contacted EE to cancel a TV package, followed this up with multiple calls to confirm plus email only to have the broadband band cancelled.
No Accountability has been taken on their part and I have been informed my account has been closed and it would take two weeks to open a new one.
LOL.
Not sure what they were thinking of here, maybe they think that BT have a bad name with some people and getting rid of the Bt name for consumers will trick people into going to EE and keeping their custom.
Or maybe like a lot of companies they have too many people in the office who have to do something, so their bosses think they are worth the money that they are paid.
Oh well, a load of customers money spent on rubbish, and now they will increase the prices again to pay for it.
Not saying other companies are perfect, even the network I am with, but I do hope they are more careful with their money.
Does anyone know what EE stands for? What do the letters mean?
I’m fairly tech savvy and observant. But I’ve never heard EE’s full name in my life.
It was originally called Everything Everwhere
EE stands for Everything Everywhere. The company registered at Companies House is Everything Everywhere, but they trade as EE, in the same way that Telefonica trade as O2.
This decision reminded me of when the Royal Mail tried to become Consignia in the early 2000s. BT is a well known and trusted brand (particularly to the older generation). What was wrong with British Telecom? There’s so much heritage and history. EE should become BT if anything!
Popular misconception. Royal Mail was never rebranded. Its holding company (Post Office plc) renamed as Consignia, but none of the public-facing brands ever changed. Silly name, but also a total storm in a teacup.
Yet they are deluding themselves when asking for so much more per month for 1 gig symmetrical. What cloud cuckoo land do the managers live in… I know as a NHS first line employee the same ones who make decisions on medical and dental school applicants. An utter failure in so many aspects.
I was in Romania in 2012, 1 gig FTTP symmetrical connection £10 per month across the country.
Yes, I know about earning differences, but to make money you have to strategically spend money.
That would be a country that is subsidised by other members of the EU (including the UK when the projects were launched) to fund the improvement in business-centric services to bring them up to the standards of the rest of Europe. Meanwhile, BT is burdened with excessive government intervention and is expected to give competitors access to its network while others are financed via debt, thus distorting the market and hindering the rationalisation of the BT business to focus on lower costs.
Bt will never learn, it doesn’t matter what they call it.The staff are still rude, completely incapable of doing their job, and the new chief executive well, I don’t think I d trust here to make a cup of tea, she had one responsibility to insure of a written apology for verbal abuse. I’m discriminating a mocking disabled people, she couldn’t even apologize for that.She’s yet again another no hoper,
I have never come across a rude employee of either BT or EE. If anything, the standard of service offered by the EE customer support staff is excellent and far removed from the staid BT of the past.
What a way to run a railroad ,,!
One wonders how much money they’ve whizzed away in all this ..?
I was happy on Plusnet mobile 🙁 now to hear this news I’m not happy. Can’t even get landline on plusnet anymore.
Blimey, Allera’s legacy has lasted as long as it took the ink to dry on his leaving card.
(Either that or they’ve finally realised that EE ID is broken beyond repair.)
Does this mean we’ll finally get a WiFi 6/WiFi 7 BT router?
No. It is possible that it will be no more than a BT branded RJ11 socket on a device attached to the ONT for voice-only services.
Late 2024 when my BT broadband and mobile phone contracts were up BT moved our mobile services to EE but kept the Broadband contract with BT, it is a complete disaster as all you get from EE is marketing emails and of course now you receive two bills per month hopefully this news will allow things to return to BT. I did try to move the broadband to Plusnet but unfortunately they do not do digital voice.
As someone who’s worked with openreach for years, it is absolutely no suprise to hear BT group still hasn’t got a clue what they’re doing. Always was and has been a mess.
Except, that is not true, and it is not an accurate reflection of reality.
That’s BT for you.
The old days of telephone line-based services are gone. That was associated with the BT brand. It is probably the right move to associate combined wireless and high-speed broadband with the “EE” brand. Going forward, the plan could be that PlusNet would be refocused on the premium service broadband consumers (excluding the wireless offering), while the BT Consumer brand is revived for those only interested in voice-only services (even though the service will be provided over FTTP/FTTC). There is room for multiple brands so long as the the serpport services are flexible enough to service them.
I hope they bring BT Mobile back. The product seemed superior to EE’s and while on the same network, seemed to be running on BT’s core. Three way calling worked perfectly, as an example.
If BT revived the BT Mobile brand, it would be provided using the EE infrastructure and platform.
A single brand under BT is the way forward as people have more trust in a long established and well known brand than a relative new brand.
Single brands do not work because they cannot be focused on specific market segments and end up satisfying anyone.
Funny, as a bog standard customer I’m not too concerned with the inter-corporate match play, which band of testerone enhanced corporate brothers at Thermopylae held-off the advances of its most significant opponent, all I’m concerned with is that when I have need to use any of the supplied equipment it works, first time, every time and that when I’m told, by unsolicited correspondence, that a new service e.g. Digital Voice will be introduced by a specified date that it is . . .or a explanation is available. So, far three pieces of correspondence through the post starting on February 1th, a statement that DV will be made available to me in 30 days, then nothing happens.
Current operations at BT strike me as being a cauldron of chaos
‘So, far three pieces of correspondence through the post starting on February 1th, a statement that DV will be made available to me in 30 days, then nothing happens.’
Isn’t ‘made available’ a different thing from ‘We’re going to force you to use it whether you want to or not and will cut you off in 30 days if you don’t’?
I received mail informing that Virgin Media and CityFibre were being made available to me but nothing happened besides that they were made available to me and they mailed me some more.
In actual fact the first letter was dated 11 March and stated ” You will be switched-over in the next 30 days” – Further, I don’t think the prime motivation for doing this comes from the customer, more the BT boardroom . . .and the prospect of saving maintenance and repair spend on an ancient and expensive to maintain system.
At present, I am content to retain a land-line connection for the phone (VOIP or not) and I’m mindful of the fact that within a year or so BT will be discarding the existing type of telephone connection that I am using in favour of their proprietry version of VOIP.
Given my OAP and medical status, and the less than benevolent attitude of His Majesty’s Government to the old, disabled or economically vulnerable, (Like Trump, its difficult to anticipate what crazy sheeskabab they’ll do next) I’d rather not find myself in a situation of being “0verlooked” or “Left-behind” and ending-up having no landline.
And as BT have already had one abortive attempt to introduce DV locally in December 2023, it does peeve and worry me as to what the fluff is going-on with them. One thing I can say, its definately not business-like.
And given the high-order charges that are levied for this “Service”, I’m inclined to expect a bit more in the way of customer communication.But, there you go, that’s the older generation, used to higher standards, as opposed of the steaming shovel loads of robbery **** and funds diversion that masquerade as service delivery, VFM and customer service today.
It seems to me, as regards my locality, there are at least two separate “Organisations” operating in BT. Higher level central management and marketing who are saying this change will occur on date X, and then the local delivery service who either are unwilling or unable or can’t be faffed to comply. Please convince me otherwise.
I know of relatives out-of-London who have undergone this change swiftly and without incident.
Place your bets now as to whether my issue will become a CEO’s executive assistant tasking within the next month.
Nonsense.
History is important and BT had/has it in bucketfuls, not all perfect but a solid, reliable fixture. The merger always looked like EE brought BT not the other way round looking at what happened to it’s consumer arm/offering.BB and DV should have stayed BT and they could have merged mobile gradually to BTee using that as it’s instigator of the way forward. It always felt somewhat rushed rather than carefully considered and planned.
The consolidation of the multi-play offering under the EE brand was the right way forward. It has worked well, and it is now the UK’s top brand. There is space for the BT consumer brand to reappear, but it should probably only focus on fixed-line, voice-only services.
You can tell corporate marketeers are on the case from the above posts. Talk about heads up own posterior.
Who, outside the corporate lovelidom gives a flying flamingo whether its called BT, EE, or elephants A-holes international incorporated. Its how they look after their customers.
Perhaps you are happier with all the half-baked nonsense being spread rather rather than engaging with the real world.
You want a bit more of the “Real World” (As opposed to the one that the BT marketeers and their website shills live in) . . . .15th March 2025 . . now 32 days after receiving the written standard letter (11th February) saying that DV was being implemented on my landline within the “Next 30 days”.
I also note that my Smart Hub 2 received a firmware update on 12th February (Thats presumably a top-down action outwith the control of local engineers) . . . meanwhile the kettles boiling in the local engineers office and requires priority attention.
Gets even better . . the Openreach “Fibre Checker” states that my location will get FTTP by December 2026. . . .Needless to say no mention of that on the BT Wholesale checker website. There’s nothing like the unjoined, joined-up communications of bits of ex-public corporations.
Who to believe, or are they both fibbing ?
The reality appears to be sometime . .never.
Strange how the reports on Trust Pilot tend towards the view that the introduction of DV is a complete “Sh*t show”.
More “Real World” information received by e-mail today . . .. changeover to DV will occur on 26th March . . . . So, in effect, just shy of two months, since the original “In the next 30 days notification” received on 11th February.
Sounds a bit like RAF bombing accuracy during the early part of WW2, “Bombing German Cities” = “Lucky if they dropped their load within 5 miles of target”
Everything crossed.
Absolute drivel. You sound unhinged and riddled with paranoia about plugging a phone into a different port. Bizarre.