It s a very exciting time for us all. Dave Hughes, Regional Director for the East of England

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1 Our half- year financial results highlighted the fact that our fibre network now passes more than 17million premises, with more than 2million homes and businesses using our fibre based services. Also noted alongside the commercial rollout was the great progress with our BDUK partnerships - you can read about some of these and case studies of how SMEs are reaping the rewards of fibre technology in this issue. The success of BT Sport was also highlighted, which is not only good news for sports fans but also has the benefit of driving broadband take up which can only have a positive impact across the region. You may also be aware that Ofcom has just released their latest UK Infrastructure Report. This report provides a very comprehensive review of actual UK communication infrastructure as of today. It highlights the strong position of the UK compared to major EU countries, and the US in particular, against the key government targets of SFBB coverage, take up and overall speed. The report also highlights that most of the growth in coverage is a result of BT s continued investment in fibre and recognise that the BDUK programme will help to address this going forward. But it s not just about broadband - we take our social responsibilities seriously at every level of engagement. We are working with organisations across the UK to help people overcome the digital divide and providing the technology and support for initiatives such as BBC Children in Need. It s a very exciting time for us all. Dave Hughes, Regional Director for the East of England dave.hughes@bt.com. Regional Director s Message New postcode checker for fibre broadband East of England looks forward to super-fast future New research shows fibre network boosting local economy Small businesses making it big with fibre broadband Power of fibre broadband feature on YouTube Young people given a sporting chance New postcode checker for fibre broadband Disabled people still facing digital divide Openreach s recently launched new-look super-fast broadband web page now gives customers a better idea of when their exchange will be upgraded. The postcode checker which tells users when exchanges in their area are due to have fibre broadband equipment installed now offers more precise information about the status of their own local exchange. Instead of telling users about all of the exchanges in their area, the postcode checker narrows it down to the exchange that serves them, annotated with the symbol that applies to the current super-fast status of the exchange. This gives a much clearer picture of whether they are likely to be able to receive fibre services. The checker will provide the information required for 99 per cent of enquiries the exceptions being where postcodes straddle a number of exchange boundaries, as they do in Shropshire and Wales. The new web page also features a list of all internet service providers offering fibrebased broadband services on the Openreach network, plus a new don t let your internet connection hold you back video animation. In addition, it has been made more mobilefriendly, so it can be viewed on phones and tablets more easily. The web page now attracts around 200,000 visitors, and delivers around 25,000 clickthroughs to ISP websites every month. Check it out at co.uk Suffolk premises benefit from early fibre boost Council leader explores potential of new fibre network Research staff party in park for charity BT volunteers win support for community groups

2 East of England looks forward to super-fast future Councils across the East of England have recently agreed multi-million pound deals with the company to deliver high-speed fibre broadband to thousands more homes and businesses in the region within the next two and a half years. In Essex, the County Council has joined forces with us on a project which, when combined with plans by the private sector, should result in around 87 per cent of properties in the county having access to the technology by the end of summer Meanwhile, the company is proud to be partnering with Central Bedfordshire Council and Bedford Borough Council, plus Milton Keynes Council, to deliver a fibre broadband infrastructure to around 33,000 firms and households. Of these, around 32,000 will be able to receive super-fast speeds of at least 24Mbps. With commercial deployment across the area taken into account, by spring 2016 coverage will have been extended to 91 per cent of local premises. The upgrade work will transform broadband speeds across the region, particularly in its rural areas. Both agreements aim to ensure that everyone in the locations covered will receive a minimum of 2Mbps, with the vast majority enjoying speeds well in excess of this. Bill Murphy, Managing Director, Next Generation Access, BT, said: This is great news for the people living in these areas. It is important to support local economies, as well as helping new development and infrastructure in these communities. This is where fibre broadband can play an essential role by revitalising towns, villages and hamlets, helping businesses to be connected in these locations. The new network will be open to all communications providers on an equal basis, meaning households and firms in Essex, Bedfordshire and Milton Keynes will benefit from a highly competitive market. It will also boost the competitiveness of local businesses, helping them to find new customers and operate more efficiently, while opening up a host of new learning and development opportunities for home users. Similar contracts have also just been signed covering Newcastle; Merseyside; West Yorkshire and the East Riding of Yorkshire; Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire; Worcestershire; and Berkshire and Oxfordshire New research shows fibre network boosting local economy New independent research by SERIO at Plymouth University and Buckman Associates shows that the fibre network in Cornwall is already providing a major economic boost to local small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) - making it one of the best connected areas in Britain and the best connected rural region in Europe. Early findings from the study revealed that after 12 months, 83 per cent of them were saving time and money thanks to the faster speeds and innovative services that fibre broadband enables. In fact, six out of every 10 (58 per cent) SMEs surveyed said their business is growing because of the new technology, whilst more than a quarter (26 per cent) have either created or safeguarded jobs as a direct result of the efficiency and innovation that super-fast broadband encourages. In addition, over a third of businesses participating in the study (37.5 per cent) reported that super-fast broadband had helped their business to generate new sales, with a quarter (24 per cent) of that group pointing to new trade overseas. Nigel Ashcroft, Superfast Cornwall programme director for the Cornwall Development Company, said: The economic benefits of the infrastructure investment will grow over time, but we have encouraging early signs that we are moving in the right direction in Cornwall. Given the challenging economic conditions for SMEs, it is great news that businesses are growing, generating new sales and creating jobs for the Cornwall economy. More than 35,000 local homes and businesses are already taking advantage of the faster speeds, including an estimated 4,130 SMEs. The Superfast Cornwall project is on track to deliver fibre broadband to 95 per cent (originally 80 per cent) of the region, as well as the Isles of Scilly, by the end of It is also aiming to boost speeds for the remaining 5 per cent of premises (about 13,000) by deploying alternative technologies.

3 Small businesses making it big with fibre broadband Businesses all over the UK are now seeing the benefits of upgrading to fibre broadband. And for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), faster speeds have transformed the way they work and their relationships with their clients, as two satisfied customers explain below. Brian Rees is company chairman of the if Agency, an integrated creative agency based in South Manchester that delivers effective online and offline campaigns for retail, leisure, finance and other business clients across the country. When we set up six years ago, we quickly embraced first generation broadband with ADSL that ran at 5Mbps downstream and 800Kbps upstream. This helped but it wasn t a full answer. Large files still couldn t be transferred efficiently and many chunky pieces of artwork were biked up and down motorways, adding risk, time and cost to jobs. We understood that we needed better connections to compete successfully against nationally-networked agencies, and to work more effectively with our blue-chip clients. Our IT consultant outlined the benefits we could gain from fibre broadband with a superfast connection. We found that BT was offering its new BT Infinity services in the region and responded immediately to its customer marketing. After two days of installation work in November 2010, we have never looked back. Using fibre connections, we are more responsive than ever, and can now zap 45Mbps downstream and about 13Mbps up. We worried about the cost and possible inconvenience, but this game-changing improvement in the service we can offer has not cost us a premium, and we didn t suffer any disruption to our business. We understand that our connections are the platform for our continuing success. We always keep a close eye on BT s plans and developments so we re best positioned to take advantage of the latest technologies in our ever-changing and furiously competitive business. Stuart Landreth is one of the founders and directors of Northumberland-based BeeBox Systems, which provides background music systems and digital signage to bars, clubs, hotels, restaurants and family entertainment centres across the North East and, increasingly, throughout the country. The traditional industry model for providing music services still widely in use today is particularly slow and inflexible. The service provider receives new material from the content provider, processes it onto a computer, burns it to a CD, and then sends it by post to the venue for the landlord to upload locally. It takes at least a week to complete the end-toend process when nothing goes wrong. Using fibre broadband, we upload new content to our servers as it arrives from our providers. Every night, each customer s system automatically downloads a scheduled daily update that includes new releases and any requests that they have made. If anything goes wrong or our customer needs a last-minute change, our fibre connection allows us to fix the problem remotely, in real time, often while the customer is still on the phone. Super-fast fibre has transformed the range and quality of services we can offer. We have two BT Infinity lines with a custom-designed router that helps to load balance our needs for fast content turnaround, and are moving away from desktop-based software to a web-based and cloud-based management system so that we can work from anywhere, at any time. We no longer experience capacity constraints that affect our general office systems, so we use all our time far more effectively. We automate where we can to add new services, and to keep our costs low and prices competitive. If your business has received a boost from fibre broadband, and you would like your story to be featured as a case study in a future edition of InTouch, we would love to hear from you. Please contact regions.comms@bt.com Power of fibre broadband featured on YouTube The winning entries in a short story competition held in Northern Ireland have been turned into thoughtprovoking films on the power of fibre broadband and they can now be found on YouTube. Northern Ireland Broadband s Super Short competition challenged teenage citizens to write a 500-word story illustrating how fibre broadband can transform people s lives. Take a look at these inspiring videos they really help bring the story to life. Fourteen-year-old Enniskillen student Dorothy McDowell s film can be viewed here. Twelveyear-old Lisburn student Amy Warke s film can be viewed here. Another inspiring video available on YouTube has been produced, capturing the great work that is going on in Cornwall via the Get IT Together programme to help local people take their first steps to get online. You can view the video on the Better Future YouTube channel here.

4 Young people given a sporting chance An exciting new venture between BT and its BT Sport partners and Comic Relief is using the power of sport to help disadvantaged young people both here in the UK and around the world. The Supporters Club has been set up to raise money to fund the coaches, mentors and teachers that these young people need to help them to fulfil their potential. When customers sign up to BT Sport through our call centres, bt.com or www. thesupportersclub.org, they are being invited to make a recurring 1, 3 or 5 monthly donation to The Supporters Club, collected via their BT bills. However, people who haven t signed up to BT Sport but wish to contribute can do so through our website as well. BT have donated 500,000 from various initiatives to kick things off and will match every 1 given by customers up to the first 1 million. In addition, we are covering the running costs of the fund so that 100 percent of donations will go straight to The Supporters Club, which will be managed by Comic Relief. The scheme aims to support initiatives both in the UK and overseas that utilise the power of sport to help disadvantaged young people improve their lives. These include projects that boost enrolment and achievement in school; reduce levels of exploitation and abuse; secure jobs; improve health and wellbeing; and heighten confidence and self-esteem. We will be regularly updating our website and producing TV programmes featuring projects funded by The Supporters Club, which will be broadcast on BT Sport. Business responsibility matters to BT, and social responsibility is a central part of our business strategy. The Supporters Club as an effective way for us to work hand in hand with our customers and our employees to make a real difference to disadvantaged young people. Already, thousands of customers and BT employees have signed up to donate to The Supporters Club, bringing in around 300,000 a year, which BT will match adding a further 300,000 in the pot. To find out more about the scheme, visit www. sport.bt.com Disabled people still facing digital divide The potential for mainstream technology to transform the lives of the 11 million disabled people in the UK remains largely untapped, according to research funded by BT s Connected Society programme. In a new report, disability charity Scope and the Royal College of Art s Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design argue that disabled people still encounter a huge digital divide and that many still have to choose between expensive specialist equipment and inaccessible mainstream gadgets. Researchers from the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design discovered that technology built for disabled people is expensive, offers low functionality and often requires specialist knowledge to adapt. Mainstream technology, like ipads and Windows Tablets, is cheaper and can do much more, but is rarely customised to meet disabled people s needs. The research also found that the information available to disabled people about enabling technology needs to be improved. They are amongst the groups least likely to use the internet, and are 20 per cent less likely to be online than their peers despite the huge potential of services like online shopping and banking which could transform their lives. With this in mind, the report outlines a series of recommendations for technology companies, commissioners and the providers of key digital services to maximise the enabling potential of digital technology. To coincide with the launch of the report entitled Enabling Technology BT, Scope and the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design unveiled a series of digital technology prototypes at the London Design Festival in September. These included: the Tailored Touch mouse, which can be made from touch-sensitive pads on any surface, and in any shape or size the Pop-up Reader, which allows a blind or partially-sighted person to read letters and other documents via their smartphone. The Enabling Technology report, plus accompanying videos, can be found at technology-for-disabled-people

5 Suffolk premises benefit from early fibre boost More than 2,500 homes and businesses across Suffolk have become the first to benefit from a multi-million pound partnership between Suffolk County Council, BT and the Government to make highspeed fibre broadband more widely available in the county. The Better Broadband for Suffolk programme will revolutionise internet access, with the County Council estimating that over the next 15 years, it will provide a 2 billion boost to the local economy and create 1,500 jobs. The partnership builds on our existing commercial plans, which already aim to make fibre broadband available to around 200,000 Suffolk premises. At the end of September three months ahead of schedule properties in and around parts of Lowestoft, Belstead, Kesgrave, Hadleigh, Whatfield, Bury St Edmunds, Stowmarket, Sudbury, Felixstowe and on the Suffolk-Essex border near Manningtree were also able to order the new technology, which provides download speeds of up to 80Mbps and upload speeds of up to 20Mbps. The early broadband boost has been achieved by engineers identifying areas where our existing fibre infrastructure could be quickly extended. However, this is just the start of the Better Broadband for Suffolk programme, which will make the technology available to 10,000 properties by the end of the year and seeks to provide super-fast broadband speeds of 24Mbps and above to 85 per cent of county s homes and businesses. Meanwhile, the County Council is committed to ensuring that every property in Suffolk has access to speeds of at least 2Mbps by the end of Over the next couple of years, more than 400 new roadside fibre cabinets are being installed in Suffolk. However, they will serve very localised areas, so only certain parts of the towns and villages where they are situated will be able to access fibre broadband initially. As the service becomes increasingly available, firms and households will be able to check whether they can receive faster speeds via the Better Broadband for Suffolk website (see below). Bill Murphy, Managing Director, Next Generation Access, BT, said: This investment in fibre broadband will boost the local economy and help to create or protect local jobs both in communities like Lowestoft and across the whole of Suffolk. It will be of enormous benefit to local businesses which can use the faster speeds to improve their competitiveness both within the UK and abroad. For more information about the programme, visit Council leader explores potential of new fibre network The leader of Tendring District Council has urged local people to reap the benefits of the company s major investment in high-speed fibre broadband in the area. Councillor Peter Halliday made the comments after visiting one of our three new super-fast street cabinets in the Kirby-Le-Soken, Kirby Cross and Great Holland area, which will allow hundreds more local premises to receive broadband speeds many times faster than those previously available. While more than 9,000 homes and businesses on the Frinton-on-Sea exchange are able to benefit from our 2.5 billion fibre broadband roll-out programme, these new cabinets were not originally in our plans for the Frinton exchange area. However, after successful talks with Tendring District Council, Openreach looked again at its planned roll-out and, because of the layout of the network, was able in this particular case to install additional cabinets. At the new green cabinet in The Street, Kirby-Le-Soken, Councillor Halliday said: The addition of these three new cabinets is proof that in partnership with BT, the support of the local community can really influence investment decisions. Super-fast broadband is vital to our communities. It will ensure that we continue to be competitive and are not left behind in the digital revolution. We will continue to do everything in our power to ensure that all residents have access to the best quality services possible. Research carried out for BT by Regeneris Consulting suggests that in the next 15 years super-fast broadband could give the economy of a typical city a 296 million boost, create around 430 new jobs and 320 start-up businesses, while for a typical town the figures are expected to be 143 million, 225 new jobs and 140 start-ups. Our fibre footprint currently passes more than 15 million UK homes and businesses. It is expanding all the time and is now due to pass two-thirds of the country s premises around 19 million by the end of spring 2014, at least 18 months ahead of the original timetable. Openreach is primarily deploying Fibre To The Cabinet (FTTC) technology, which provides download speeds of up to 80Mbps and upload speeds of up to 20Mbps. For further information on the Openreach programme, visit co.uk BT s Annette Thorpe and Colin Brooks, BT and Peter Halliday, Leader of Tendring District Council

6 Research staff party in park for charity BT employees are renowned for their commitment to helping charities in their local communities. And in their latest fundraising endeavour, staff at Adastral Park, our research base in Suffolk, have pulled in thousands of pounds for several worthy causes in the area. The event, a music festival called Additude held at Adastral Park itself, raised more than 3,000. Over 2,500 employees, friends and family braved cool, blustery conditions to enjoy an evening of entertainment, a fun fair and a line-up of acts topped by the UK s biggest Take That tribute band, Rule The World. Kate Grimwood of the RSPCA said: RSPCA Suffolk East and Ipswich is absolutely delighted to have been nominated by the staff at BT s Adastral Park as one of the five local charities which will receive a share of the money that has been raised by the Additude event. We could not achieve what we do here in our part of Suffolk without the tremendous support of the local people and businesses. Every penny raised will be distributed between East Anglia Children s Hospices (EACH); RSPCA Suffolk East and Ipswich Branch; Cancer Campaign in Suffolk; MacMillan; and St Elizabeth Hospice the top five local charities chosen by those at Adastral Park. BT volunteers win support for community groups The company is rewarding organisations and community groups across the East of England with grants of up to 1,000. The donations are being made through our employee recognition scheme, the BT People Awards, which were launched last year. The scheme acknowledges our volunteering heroes, who offer their time and skills to help people in their local community, by awarding grants to organisations with which they are involved. Nineteen groups in the East of England have received grants to enable them to continue their excellent work in the community, including: Kettleburgh Green Trust in Woodbridge, Lawford Junior Football Club, 356 Felixstowe Squadron RAF Air Cadets, Ipswich Canoe Club and Hi Tension Trampoline Club in Ardleigh. Dave Hughes, BT Regional Director, said: BT has a long history of working with good causes to help improve lives. We see volunteering as a two-way benefit as there are many development opportunities when new skills are brought back into the workplace. Some of these experiences can only be gained by playing such an active role in the local community. For more information, and a complete list of the latest award recipients, go to To find out more about BT s wider portfolio of activities please see our new brochure at