BT to Accelerate Latin-American Growth

LONDON, Oct. 3, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- BT today announced a series of investments aimed at doubling its business in key Latin American countries over the next three years. By recruiting 250 new staff, increasing its professional services capabilities, opening new centers of excellence and implementing a wide range of network and customer service improvements, BT will better support global customers investing in this region and help large Latin American companies (the "multilatinas") expand globally. BT's research has identified an addressable market for the company in the Latin American region of $18.5 billion as at 31 March 2011, growing at a rapid 7% per annum.

BT already serves around 1,300 organizations in the region, including a number of global multinational companies, such as Unilever, Rhodia, BASF and Fiat. BT has this year signed a number of high profile contracts with Latin-American companies such as the $206 million contract with ECT – Empresa Brasileira de Correios e Telegrafos (the state-owned Brazilian Post Office and Telegraph Company), with Caixa Economica Federal to connect its data centers with its banking correspondents and lottery outlets in Brazil, with Pao de Acucar, the largest retail conglomerate in Brazil, with Ecopetrol, Colombia's largest company, and with Colombia's Ministry of Information and Communication Technologies, where BT supports the Compartel program to deliver internet connectivity to hundreds of schools, hospitals, council buildings, courthouses and other government institutions and contracts.

Jeff Kelly, CEO BT Global Services said, "Latin America is showing great dynamism and ability to grow in the face of a turbulent global economy. Our global customers recognize this. Right now, they are expanding and investing in the region. At BT we also understand that large Latin-American companies, the "multilatinas," are rolling out ambitious strategies of globalization. These powerhouse players need consistency across their global operations, in their home bases and all over the world. That is exactly what our investments allow us to deliver to them."

As part of the new program, BT will hire around 250 new employees in the region, including highly skilled professional services specialists to support customer needs and deliver BT's enhanced portfolio of products and services.  Through BT's professional services capabilities, global delivery model and strong partner relationships, customers active in Latin America will benefit from industry leading expertise.

BT will also extend the coverage of its high performance networks in the region by increasing the number of its MPLS points of presence by around 20% and by launching Ethernet services in 21 new cities. By combining these with satellite capabilities which currently connect 37,000 sites, together with its recently improved data center infrastructure, BT will offer its customers a market leading network capability in the region, capable of connecting their most remote locations to deliver business critical applications and services as efficiently as possible. Latin American companies growing globally will fully benefit from BT's ability to provide IP VPN services in 197 countries/ territories, Ethernet VPN services in 28 countries and an Applications Performance Management service around the world.

BT will deploy three new Centers of Excellence to better support its client requirements in the region. The new centers of excellence will be in Rio de Janeiro (satellite technologies, products and services), Bogotá (security and data center services) and Mexico City (IP telephony and contact centers).

BT will also launch more than 30 new products or services across the region. BT will increase the reach of the BT Inbound Contact services with new nodes and will be building a new extension of the BT Cloud Contact platform to give customers access to a "pay-as-you-go" cloud contact center in the region. The BT One Video immersive video-conferencing offer will be enhanced with new video bridges. The BT One Cloud hosted unified communications service will be launched together with BT One Voice to deliver a single, consistent service, which can be deployed very quickly to customers' operations as they expand in the region. The existing portfolio and the new launches will be supported by the BT Assure managed security services.

BT also has a wide range of industry specific solutions, including propositions customized to the financial services sector, which are currently being deployed in Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, and will soon be extended to the rest of the region.

BT will launch wholesale solutions tailored to the needs of other regional telecom operators, designed to help enhance and extend the range of services they provide to their own customers.

Today's announcement is part of a wider ongoing investment program supporting BT Global Services' growth strategy. Previous announcements include a successful growth program in Asia-Pacific, improvements to BT's global portfolio and network capabilities, investments in highly skilled professional services resources, and the development of four strategic global sector teams to better serve multinational customers: banking & financial services, government & health, consumer packaged goods and manufacturing, logistics & pharmaceuticals.

Note to Editors – BT in Latin America

Currently, BT operates in 22 Latin American countries and employs around 1,000 people across the region, offering a wide range of networked IT services including IP infrastructure, application services, outsourcing solutions and business transformation. In December 2010, BT Global Services was positioned "among the stronger global competitors in Latin America" in a report by leading analyst research company Current Analysis. The report states that "thanks to its past acquisitions, the company [BT] already has the regional resources in place to increase its profile and win clients." BT operates three datacentres located in Argentina, Brazil and Colombia and seven network Operations centres in the region, providing monitoring and proactive diagnosis on a 24x7 basis for its customers. The Brazilian centre provides worldwide support with multilingual capabilities. BT serves around 1,300 multi-site organisations in Latin America across a wide variety of sectors.

About BT

BT is one of the world's leading providers of communications services and solutions, serving customers in more than 170 countries.  Its principal activities include the provision of networked IT services globally; local, national and international telecommunications services to our customers for use at home, at work and on the move; broadband and internet products and services and converged fixed/mobile products and services. BT consists principally of four lines of business: BT Global Services, BT Retail, BT Wholesale and Openreach.

In the year ended 31 March 2011, BT Group's revenue was 20,076m pounds Sterling with profit before taxation of 1,717m pounds.

British Telecommunications plc (BT) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of BT Group plc and encompasses virtually all businesses and assets of the BT Group.  BT Group plc is listed on stock exchanges in London and New York. For more information, visit www.btplc.com

SOURCE BT