BT Wholesale and Ventures was a 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 provided voice, broadband, data, hosted communication, managed network and IT services to communications providers (CPs) in

Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It is ...

. It was merged with BT's Business and Public Sector division to form

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 ...

in October 2018. Wholesale and Ventures provided services BT's other divisions:

BT Consumer BT Consumer is the main retail division of United Kingdom telecommunications company BT Group that provides fixed-line, mobile, broadband and digital television to consumers in the UK. It buys access to some of these services from BT's other divi ...

BT Business and Public Sector BT or Bt may refer to: Arts, media and entertainment The arts * BT (musician) (born Brian Transeau), American electronic musician * BT (album), ''BT'' (album), a 2000 album by Buck-Tick * Burton Taylor Studio or ''The BT'', managed by Oxford Pl ...

and EE. It also offered services to media companies and broadcasters, and its ventures side offered a range of products and services. It provided the voice services to UK customers via

999 999 or triple nine most often refers to: * 999 (emergency telephone number), a telephone number for the emergency services in several countries * 999 (number), an integer * AD 999, a year * 999 BC, a year Books * ''999'' (anthology) or ''999: T ...

118 500 In telecommunications, directory assistance or directory inquiries is a phone service used to find out a specific telephone number and/or address of a residence, business, or government entity. Technology Directory assistance systems incorporate ...

and Next Generation Text Service, which helps those who can’t hear or speak on the phone. In April 2018, Gavin Patterson, then BT Group's CEO, announced Wholesale and Ventures was to be combined with the group's Business and Public Sector division into a newly-formed division,

. It came after BT's decision to undertake a streamlining of its operations, in a bid to strengthen its offerings as a business. Prior to its merger with Business and Public Sector, Wholesale and Ventures was formerly known as BT Wholesale, taking on the name following BT's new organisational structure that took effect in April 2016 after its acquisition of EE, and comprises the existing BT Wholesale division along with EE's

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 ...

business as well as some specialist businesses such as Fleet, Payphones and Directories. Its ventures side included the following businesses at time of its restructuring: * BT Redcare – protects homes and businesses in the UK against intruders, accidental fire or arson * BT Cables – supports and supplies a range of cables and accessories * Directory Solutions - the sole distributor of the UK’s directory information to producers of directory products and services * BT’s Phone Book – the only UK directory that includes business and residential listings * Payphones (

Red telephone box The red telephone box, a telephone kiosk for a public telephone designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, is a familiar sight on the streets of the United Kingdom, Malta, Bermuda and Gibraltar. Despite a reduction in their numbers in recent years, ...

, KX series,

LinkUK LinkUK or InLinkUK is an infrastructure project that planned to cover major cities in the United Kingdom with free Wi-Fi service. LinkUK kiosks, called Links, was initially rolled out in the London borough of Camden in 2017, and later in Lambeth ...

) – handles

telephone call A telephone call is a connection over a telephone network A telephone network is a telecommunications network that connects telephones, which allows telephone calls between two or more parties, as well as newer features such as fax and interne ...

s and provides additional services such as

advertising Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a product or service. Advertising aims to put a product or service in the spotlight in hopes of drawing it attention from consumers. It is typically used to promote a ...

cash machines An automated teller machine (ATM) or cash machine (in British English) is an electronic telecommunications device that enables customers of financial institutions to perform financial transactions, such as cash withdrawals, deposits, fund ...

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols, based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio wave ...

and small cell mobile hotspots * BT Supply Chain – provides

supply chain management In commerce, supply chain management (SCM) is the management of the flow of goods and services including all processes that transform raw materials into final products between businesses and locations. This can include the movement and stor ...

for both Group businesses and its external customer base

Products

Wholesale Broadband Connect

Wholesale Broadband Connect (WBC) is BT Wholesale's up-to-24 Mbit/s

ADSL2+ G.992.5 (also referred to as ADSL2+, G.dmt.bis+, and G.adslplus) is an ITU-T standard for asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) broadband Internet access. The standard has a maximum theoretical downstream sync speed of 24 megabits per second ...

offering in the UK. WBC replaced the

ADSL Max BT Broadband is a broadband service offered by BT Consumer; a division of BT Group in the United Kingdom. It was formerly known as BT Total Broadband, BT Yahoo! Broadband and BT Openworld. With the introduction of BT Infinity, the Broadband packag ...

product. It also refers to BT's native fibre-to-the-premises service.

IPstream

IPstream is the most highly used

wholesale Wholesaling or distributing is the sale of goods or merchandise to retailers; to industrial, commercial, institutional or other professional business users; or to other wholesalers (wholesale businesses) and related subordinated services. In ...

broadband Internet 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. ...

service in the UK. BT Wholesale sells the service to

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 ...

s and

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, ...

providers, who use it to provide

ADSL Asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) is a type of digital subscriber line (DSL) technology, a data communications technology that enables faster data transmission over copper telephone lines than a conventional voiceband modem can provide. ...

services to customers over

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 ...

telephone lines. The IPstream product covers the transport of data between the end-user's premises and an interconnect point of the ISPs choice, such as their main colocation facility, which is served by one or more links called BT Centrals. BT has operational control of the network for tasks such as load balancing. Transit of data to and from the internet, along with other services such as email servers, are the responsibility of the ISP. IPStream is widely used by ISPs because it is cheaper to set up and costs less in maintenance than the ISP building its own network. This is balanced by the fact that usage costs for ISPs are higher using IPstream than their own network. Datastream is the similar system where ISPs in the UK use BT equipment but use their own IP transport. BT Wholesale pays Openreach for access to the

local loop In telephony, the local loop (also referred to as the local tail, subscriber line, or in the aggregate as the last mile) is the physical link or circuit that connects from the demarcation point of the customer premises to the edge of the common ...

and the exchange. The alternative to IPStream is

local-loop unbundling Local loop unbundling (LLU or LLUB) is the regulatory process of allowing multiple telecommunications operators to use connections from the telephone exchange to the customer's premises. The physical wire connection between the local exchange and ...

, in which the ISP obtains these facilities from Openreach directly, and makes its own arrangements for onward carriage of the data stream. Similar services are offered in other countries where there is a single dominant telecommunications provider, such as wholesale DSL from

Telstra Telstra Group Limited is an Australian telecommunications company that builds and operates telecommunications networks and markets voice, mobile, internet access, pay television and other products and services. It is a member of the S&P/ASX 20 ...

in Australia. IPstream has largely been retired by BT in favour of its Wholesale Broadband Connect.

References

{{Telecommunications industry in the United Kingdom BT Group Digital subscriber line Telecommunications companies of the United Kingdom Internet service providers of the United Kingdom Telecommunications companies established in 2006 Wholesalers of the United Kingdom