BT Consumer is the main retail division of
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...
telecommunications company
BT Group
BT Group plc (trading as BT and formerly British Telecom) is a British multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered in London, England. It has operations in around 180 countries and is the largest provider of fixed-line, broa ...
that provides
fixed-line
A landline (land line, land-line, main line, home phone, fixed-line, and wireline) is a telephone connection that uses metal wires or optical fiber telephone line for transmission, as distinguished from a mobile cellular network, which uses ...
,
mobile
Mobile may refer to:
Places
* Mobile, Alabama, a U.S. port city
* Mobile County, Alabama
* Mobile, Arizona, a small town near Phoenix, U.S.
* Mobile, Newfoundland and Labrador
Arts, entertainment, and media Music Groups and labels
* Mobile ( ...
,
broadband
In telecommunications, broadband is wide bandwidth data transmission which transports multiple signals at a wide range of frequencies and Internet traffic types, that enables messages to be sent simultaneously, used in fast internet connections. ...
and
digital television
Digital television (DTV) is the transmission of television signals using digital encoding, in contrast to the earlier analog television technology which used analog signals. At the time of its development it was considered an innovative adva ...
to
consumer
A consumer is a person or a group who intends to order, or uses purchased goods, products, or services primarily for personal, social, family, household and similar needs, who is not directly related to entrepreneurial or business activities. T ...
s in the
UK. It buys access to some of these services from BT's other divisions:
Openreach
Openreach Limited is a company wholly owned by BT Group plc, that maintains the telephone cables, ducts, cabinets and exchanges that connect nearly all homes and businesses in the United Kingdom to the national broadband and telephone network. I ...
and
EE. It is the largest consumer fixed-line and broadband
ISP
An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise private ...
in the UK.
It was established alongside BT Business (now combined with
BT Enterprise
BT Enterprise is a division of United Kingdom telecommunications company BT Group that provides products and services to organisations in the small-to-medium-sized business, corporate and public sectors, and wholesale services through BT Wholesa ...
) following a two-way split from former division, BT Retail in 2013 to allow BT to "better serve its customers and focus even more on delivering its strategic priorities". It took on the consumer operations of BT Retail that involved BT Consumer together with
BT Wi-fi
BT Wi-fi is a global wi-fi hotspot service provided by BT Group in partnership with Fon (No longer in partnership with Fon as of 2020) . It was established following a rebranding of the former BT Openzone and BT Fon, bringing both of the servic ...
(part of BT Enterprises) and the consumer part of
BT Ireland
BT Communications (Ireland) Limited is a telecommunications and internet company in Ireland. It is a subsidiary of BT Group plc.
History
Esat Telecom
The company was founded in 1990 by a consortium headed by business magnate Denis O'Brien and ...
. It retained its name following BT's new organisational structure that took effect in April 2016 after its acquisition of EE, with no changes made to the division. On 28 July 2017, BT announced organisational changes to "simplify its operating model, strengthen accountabilities and accelerate its transformation" and involves bringing together its BT Consumer and EE divisions into a new unified BT Consumer division that will operate across three brands – BT, EE and
Plusnet
Plusnet plc is a British triple play internet service provider (ISP); providing broadband, landline and mobile services. The company was founded in 1997 in Sheffield, England, and became a public limited company (plc) in July 2004 when it was f ...
. It will take effect from 1 April 2018.
Products and history
BT Consumer provides
fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) and
fibre-to-the-property (FTTP) broadband,
IPTV
Internet Protocol television (IPTV) is the delivery of television content over Internet Protocol (IP) networks. This is in contrast to delivery through traditional terrestrial, satellite, and cable television formats. Unlike downloaded media, ...
and
mobile
Mobile may refer to:
Places
* Mobile, Alabama, a U.S. port city
* Mobile County, Alabama
* Mobile, Arizona, a small town near Phoenix, U.S.
* Mobile, Newfoundland and Labrador
Arts, entertainment, and media Music Groups and labels
* Mobile ( ...
services nationally, as well as providing access to the
BT Wi-Fi
BT Wi-fi is a global wi-fi hotspot service provided by BT Group in partnership with Fon (No longer in partnership with Fon as of 2020) . It was established following a rebranding of the former BT Openzone and BT Fon, bringing both of the servic ...
hotspot service. Since 2020, BT Consumer has begun preparing for the 2025 switch off of the
public switched telephone network
The public switched telephone network (PSTN) provides Communications infrastructure, infrastructure and services for public Telecommunications, telecommunication. The PSTN is the aggregate of the world's circuit-switched telephone networks that ...
(PSTN) by introducing their Digital Voice (
VoIP
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also called IP telephony, is a method and group of technologies for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. The terms Internet t ...
) service, which allows calls to be made and received through a Smart Hub 2.
In March 2015, BT launched its
mobile virtual network operator
A mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) is a wireless communications services provider that does not own the wireless network infrastructure over which it provides services to its customers. An MVNO enters into a business agreement with a mobil ...
(MVNO) product,
BT Mobile
BT Mobile is a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) provided by BT Consumer; a division of BT Group in the United Kingdom that was launched in March 2015. It uses the EE network via an MVNO agreement signed in March 2014 as well as using the ...
, in the United Kingdom. The service, that uses the EE network following an MVNO agreement in March 2014,
was BT's first offering of mobile services since 2002, when BT Cellnet was spun-off to form
O2.
It also made use of the spectrum BT won in the
4G auction held by
Ofcom
The Office of Communications, commonly known as Ofcom, is the government-approved regulatory and competition authority for the broadcasting, telecommunications and postal industries of the United Kingdom.
Ofcom has wide-ranging powers acros ...
in 2013.
The following year, on 29 January 2016,
BT Group
BT Group plc (trading as BT and formerly British Telecom) is a British multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered in London, England. It has operations in around 180 countries and is the largest provider of fixed-line, broa ...
's £12.5 billion acquisition of EE was officially completed following ratification from the UK's
Competition and Markets Authority
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is the competition regulator in United Kingdom. It is a non-ministerial government department in the United Kingdom, responsible for strengthening business competition and preventing and reducing anti-com ...
. BT Mobile offers handsets and SIM-only plans through EE's 4G network, with broadband customers able to get a discount on mobile products. Since the roll-out of EE's
5G network, BT Mobile customers wanting to take advantage of the faster network are encouraged to take up products through EE, with BT Mobile deciding against offering 5G services.
On 29 January 2020, BT announced that it had completed its commitment of having 100% of customers service calls into its consumer business answered in the UK and Ireland, becoming the only major communication provider to do so in the process. As part of the commitment, calls are routed to the nearest call centre that's able to deal with the relevant customer enquiry, which Consumer CEO Marc Allera said is part of "providing a personal, and local, service is to our customers."
In February 2021, BT and EE launched a new home wifi service that combines the power of its fixed-line broadband services with its mobile network. With the introduction of the Hybrid Connect device, customers who lose connection through their Smart Hub 2 will automatically be connected to EE's mobile network, giving them a continuous, interrupted connection that BT described as "unbreakable".
References
External links
*
{{Telecommunications industry in the United Kingdom
BT Group
Telecommunications companies of the United Kingdom
Internet service providers of the United Kingdom
Companies established in 1981