Five year agreement to manage increases in mobile network requirements, help drive greater cost efficiencies and deliver an enhanced mobile broadband experience for customers
Vodafone UK (LSE: VOD) and BT (LSE: BT) today announced a new managed network solutions agreement that will see BT Wholesale provide and manage high speed connectivity between Vodafone’s UK base stations and its core national network. Under the terms of the five-year agreement, BT will deliver a cost-efficient and flexible solution that enables Vodafone UK to manage the predicted growth in traffic and bandwidth requirements from its range of new bandwidth-intensive mobile applications, such as web browsing, video streaming and music downloads, without the need to invest significant capital in self-build technology.
The five-year contract deploys BT's new 21st Century Network-enabled Ethernet service, offering backhaul speeds of up to 60 Mbit/s. The new next-generation, carrier class service provides customers with flexible and scalable bandwidth to meet increased demand, with costs that match actual traffic and revenue increases. This agreement allows Vodafone UK to avoid capital investment risk, while benefiting from the economies of scale and national reach BT Wholesale offers.
“By working with BT Wholesale, we are able to realise immediate cost efficiencies and focus on our customers while BT provides a managed service for our growing access and backhaul needs,” said Jeni Mundy, Chief Technology Officer of Vodafone UK. “This agreement supports us in our continued drive to expand our market-leading position in sales of mobile internet and broadband products and services, and positions us to meet growing demand from our customers.”
Sally Davis, chief executive of BT Wholesale, said, “Communications providers want to drive revenue growth from new services while closely managing their capital and operational investments. Choosing to outsource the requirement to BT means the customer gets the benefits of scalability, flexibility and our expertise to deliver capacity where and when it’s needed, efficiently and profitably. Vodafone and its customers will also benefit from cutting edge Ethernet.
Consumers are increasingly using mobile devices to access and send data such as photos, video and gaming and high speed web browsing. These high-bandwidth applications put an additional load on backhaul networks. BT is able to manage this access network and flex it to cope with the demands that Vodafone’s customers put on it.
For more information please contact:
BT Group Newsroom
00 (44) 20 7356 5369
Vodafone Group Media Relations
00 (44) 1635 664444
About BT
BT is one of the world’s leading providers of communications solutions and services operating in 170 countries. Its principal activities include the provision of local, national and international telecommunications services to our customers for use at home, at work and on the move; 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
About Vodafone UK
Vodafone UK has 18.4 million customers and is part of the world's largest mobile community offering a wide range of voice and data communications. The company is committed to providing mobile solutions that allow both consumer and business customers to make the most of now.
Vodafone customers can now use Internet on your Mobile to view and navigate web pages and their favourite sites such as YouTube, eBay and the BBC. In addition, Vodafone connects customers across the globe with roaming agreements worldwide. It provides 3G roaming in 29 countries and offers great roaming value with Vodafone Passport.
Vodafone UK falls in the top 20 Best Big Companies to Work For in the Sunday Times Best Companies List, March 2008. For more information, please visit www.vodafone.co.uk