BT Group

BT Group consists of three lines of business: BT Retail, which provides communications services to more than 20 million U.K. consumers and businesses; BT Wholesale, which provides network services and solutions within the United Kingdom; and BT Global Services, which delivers networked IT services to meet the needs of multinational companies.

BT's presence in the Asia-Pacific region, established largely through BT Global Services, dates back to 1985. The company has been beefing up its regional presence and recently clinched a major contract to provide news content provider, Reuters, with network services worth US$3 billion. Under the eight-year contract, BT will manage Reuter's secure data networks.

BT Group is currently planning to transform its infrastructure into a pure Internet Protocol-based network by 2009.

When completed, this mega network called 21CN (21st Century network) will enable its customers to access any communications service from any device, from anywhere, at broadband speed. This is part of BT's strategy to simplify things, including the network, so that converged services--be it fixed, mobile, voice or data services--can be delivered faster, more efficiently and more cost-effectively.