Towards a fresh year of keeping you informed as we work together

This month we celebrate the second anniversary of The Loop. It’s an occasion that gives me an ideal opportunity to review the changes and advances of the past 24 months and look ahead.

Our industry faces major challenges. Some, such as the need to reduce costs, existed two years ago, but have been heightened by the global economic downturn. Our industry continues to consolidate in the face of a new generation of competitors entering the market armed with radically different business models and lower costs of entry. The need to continually improve service quality has never been greater as customer expectations keep rising in today’s 24/7 society.

Sally Davis, CEO, BT Wholesale

But the market in which we operate has seen some fundamental changes in the last couple of years, which present both challenges and opportunities. The first is the mainstream adoption of carrier grade Internet Protocol. IP has gone from a niche technology to a mainstream service enabler.

The next big challenge is the explosive growth in the distribution and delivery of digital video content across both fixed and mobile networks. Four years ago 100 million videos were watched on YouTube every day. It is two billion today. The BBC’s iPlayer launched in December 2007. It now delivers over 120 million requests every day which adds up to 7 petabytes of data a month.

As a result of this, the volume of data carried by mobile operators has risen twentyfold over the last two years, and is forecast to grow almost as much again in the next two years. The figures for fixed operators are less dramatic but still very significant.

Cloud computing is finally coming of age. Gartner forecast that by 2012 20% of all businesses will own no IT assets. That will not only further increase bandwidth demand but will also make high levels of service reliability ever more essential.

We are committed to working really closely with you to ensure our portfolio, delivered over copper and increasingly, fibre, meets your needs in this rapidly evolving market – and, as always, you can rely on The Loop to keep you briefed on what’s new and important to you and your customers.

Yours sincerely,

Sally Davis
CEO, BT Wholesale