Calls And Lines

Calls and lines giant BT has broadcast its plans to upgrade another 200 cabinet by early next year. The plan aims to increase the speeds of ADSL2+ to 20Mbps. Areas in Wales, Scotland and Cornwall are to be added to the next generation network – or the 21^st Century as BT calls it. With this new plan, BT will then have 504 exchanges on the network.

In Wales, people often have trouble with broadband due to most towns being quite rural. BT will update a further 9 cabinets in Wales, bringing the grand total to 46 cabinets and offering 42% if the country higher broadband speeds and better connection.

The prestigious and world-renowned Oxford University must be fighting embarrassment this week as it’s been revealed that more people applied for BT apprenticeships than applied for a place at the university.

BT, the calls and lines giant, had 221 apprenticeship places available and received almost 24,000 applications. Oxford University on the other hand, received 17,000 applications for its 3,000 places. So that works out at around 108 applications per post at BT and just over 5 applications per space at Oxford.

Of course, this is to be expected though. Regardless of how prestigious a university is – in fact, the more prestigious it is, the less chance it’ll have of future students applying there. In fact, this counts for all universities. With fees rising and the average student leaving university with disgustingly high debts of over £20,000, the younger generation are going to choose work over education any day of the week. Or in this case, telecoms over tutorials.

The sad fact is that in order to plug our debt, our government is creating a nation where knowledge will fast become obsolete.

BT has successfully averted a strike, a victory that must offer some serious relief to the calls and lines giant. A majority vote of 87% of the Communications Workers Union (CWU) has voted to accept the offer that BT put on the table.

The deal states that the 50,000 plus members of the CWU will receive a £% pay rise that will be backdated to 1 January 2010. From January 1^st 2011, there will be a 3% increase to base pay for the CWU BT workers and another in January 2012. Just shows how you should always stick to your guns I guess!

There might be a recession on and jobs might be getting scarce – but it doesn’t stop companies raising their prices in the spirit of every man for himself! Just when struggling households thought that things couldn’t get any tighter, they get kicked in the face by their calls and line providers who increase their prices.

Both BT and TalkTalk, telecoms providers, have announced a price hike in their line rental and call charges. Both companies are raising their prices by 10% - to ensure that they come through the recession ok. At TalkTalk, landline calls will cost 17.3 ppm from October. Time to get your mobiles out!

Calls and lines giant BT is once again going to oppose the ruling of Ofcom’s latest consultation concerning its pension deficit.

BT wanted to increase its wholesale charges for the services it provides to other internet service providers in order to raise money to plug the deficit. However, Ofcom has been pretty much of the opinion that it’s BT’s mess and it is up to BT to clean it up. Although Ofcom obviously phrased its ruling a little more subtly than that.

BT is currently acting like it’s no big deal, but it’s going to fight the ruling on principle. Of course.

Chief Executive of BT, the calls and lines giant, has said that the telecoms company may in fact bid in up and coming UK mobile broadband spectrum auction – however, it isn’t a top priority.

The UK government has just given the green light to Ofcom to arrange the mobile spectrum auction, hoping no doubt to raise a few billion to help pay off Britain’s ridiculously high debt. Many telecoms companies are now chomping at the bit, waiting for the auction to be announced.

As BT has access to mobile networks, it isn’t really too bothered with spending a load of money it doesn’t have on mobile spectrum. Although of course, the company will take a look at it, just in case. Instead, Livingston has said that the company’s main objectives are to improve customer service, invest in the future and cut costs even further – no doubt by getting rid of even more employees.

The calls and lines provider BT has reported an unexpected 6% rise in first-quarter adjusted core earnings despite its group revenues being down 4%.

The 6% rise in core earnings brings the total to £1.4 billion, ahead of the expectations of most analysts. However, BT is far from out of the woods. Its Global Services unit has been hemorrhaging money at an alarming rate and its huge pension deficit is now at £6.6 billion – hardly a minor worry.

The slight upturn in BT’s fortunes is largely due to its cutting costs – as of now, BT is down 8% on labour costs from last year. Still, they can only make so many people redundant before they have to actually turn around and deal with their deficits.

An initial ruling by Ofcom, the UK telecoms regulator, has put the breaks on BT’s plan to raise customer prices in order to reduce their pension deficit.

Currently the calls and lines giant has a £7.5 billion deficit in its pension scheme and the initial plan was to put up the prices of its calls and lines which would hopefully cancel out a third of its deficit eventually. However, Ofcom has decided that customers should not be asked to bear the brunt of BTs mistakes.

BT has the country’s biggest final-salary pension scheme but due to under-funding by the company, economic uncertainty and longer life expectancy, BT has managed to garner a huge deficit that it is struggling to reduce.