01732 759725 46 COMMS Christopher Wellbelove DL, Senior Partner Marketing Consultant, BT Wholesale Gavin Jones, Channel Sales Director, BT Wholesale BT Wholesale readies partners for an all-IP future i.e. the new variants. I thought that was the tipping point. In Quarter 4 (2021), it was 42% and in Quarter 3 it was 38%. The fact that it has grown by 25% in a quarter and that it is the predominant service now is a message for all of us. The future is here.” He added that turning off the PSTN in 2025 will save BT £1 billion by removing the need for 5,000 or 6,000 BT exchanges in UK towns and cities, so resellers should be in no doubt that it is going to happen. “It’s a massive programme and the message I want to get out there is you need to be at the front; you don’t want to be one of the laggards. Be prepared and be ready,” he said. The ideal guide Next up, Bruce Welland, Head of Media, Planning & Performance, Gavin Murphy, Sarah Tomlinson and Wing-Yee Lo from the propositions team and Christopher Wellbelove DL, Senior Partner Marketing Consultant, outlined some of the ways in which BT Wholesale is helping partners to make the most of this opportunity. Likening BT’s role to that of a guide on Mount Everest, Welland said: “In a world of quantum networking and the edge and security for small businesses what everyone needs is a partner who is a guide. If you were brave enough to go up Mount Everest, what would you want a guide to be? They must be experienced; you don’t want to be guided by a novice. They must make things simple – you don’t want to be bamboozled by lots of complexity. You want that guide to explain very simply how you are going to get to the top. You want that guide to understand all the technology you are going to use to get to the top – the ropes, the carabiner etc. – and to know if there’s anything new that’s going to keep you safer. The last point is you want that guide to be considerate of the mountain and the world around them. Those are the four core elements of what a guide is and where we’re taking the brand.” All this, he suggests, is encapsulated in the message BT Means Business and the company’s new advertising campaign. This includes an advertisement for BT’s Digital Marketing Hub, which aggregates customers’ digital marketing activity across social media into one platform and lets them optimise spending across different channels. An example, added Welland, of BT Wholesale’s expansion into new product areas and new opportunities for partners. Portfolio expansion Gavin Murphy, Head of Propositions, highlighted how BT Wholesale is well positioned to take advantage of key partner growth areas including broadband access and wide area connectivity (cited by 63% of respondents to a 2021 Omdia/ BT Insight survey), ahead of professional On May 19, BT Wholesale explained what it is doing to help partners maximise growing opportunities in connectivity, voice/unified communications, mobile comms and professional services at a BT Wholesale Partner Plus event at BT Tower. Featuring guest speaker Kriss Akabusi MBE, who spoke about the importance of teamwork and mentoring in his athletics career, Partner Plus LIVE coincided with a wider push by BT Group to position BT as its lead business brand. As part of this process, the BT Enterprise division, which includes BT Wholesale, has produced an Enterprise Charter for its 1.2 million UK business and public sector customers based around four key promises: to lead the way in innovation; to be trusted experts; to be easier to do business with; and to put ‘purpose’ (i.e. ESG) at the heart of its business. The new charter (see box) was announced at the opening of the ‘Aurora’ R&D showcase at BT Group’s new London HQ, highlighting innovative solutions incorporating 5G, IoT, robotics and AI, and the launch of a multi-million-pound UK TV and out-of-home advertising campaign featuring the strapline ‘BT Means Business.’ Partner Plus LIVE gave BT Wholesale Channel Sales Director Gavin Jones the opportunity to address these initiatives through the prism of the BT Wholesale partner programme launched last year to develop closer ties with partners through enhanced support with a greater focus on propositions rather than just products, allied to increased automation through API integrations. Jones pointed out as well as investing millions of pounds in the products and services supplied by BT Wholesale, BT Group itself was creating opportunities for new products and services through the roll-out of full fibre (it now passes 7 million homes in the UK with fibre and is going past an additional 27,000 homes each month), technological innovation and the transition to an All-IP world, with the ISDN switch-off imminent (15 months to stopsell and 42 months to network shut-down). He said: “In Quarter 1 this year, 52% of our broadband orders were SOGEA or FTTP Ready, steady, go
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