BT (NYSE: BT) saw its share of growing pains in its fiscal first quarter as revenue declined by 5 percent to £4.76 million ($7.75 million) while broadband subscribers continued to rise.
During the quarter, BT added 141,000 new retail broadband subscribers, a figure that represents 56 percent of the DSL and LLU market net additions of 251,000. As of the end of June, BT had 5.8 million broadband customers.
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Click here to view selected slides from BT's earnings report. |
As has been the case in recent quarters, BT's Openreach division added 18,000 new copper-based DSL subscribers. In addition, Openreach's overall revenue was up 5 percent due to growth in Ethernet, broadband and local loop unbundling (LLU) services.
The service provider has also made continual progress with its Fiber to the Cabinet (FTTC) and Fiber to the Home (FTTH) broadband network deployments with over 200,000 users.
Of course, there were a number of losses during the quarter.
While broadband continues to be BT Retail's strongest performer, the segment's revenue was down 4 percent due to industrywide declines in voice service revenue. Likewise, consumer revenue decreased 6 percent and business revenue remained flat.
BT Global Services was a similar story. Although the unit saw a 2 percent rise in orders, including contracts with the Brazilian Post Office and Telegraph Company (Correios) for managed network services, revenue was down 5 percent.
Finally, BT Wholesale's revenue declined 5 percent due to lower transit revenue of £43 million ($69.9 million). BT attributes the losses to lower wireless service rate reductions, and a 1 percent reduction in broadband lines being migrated to LLU and various Ofcom regulatory decisions.
Looking toward the rest of the year, BT said growth BT Retail and Openreach will offset weakness in BT Wholesale EBITDA.
For more:
- see the release
Special Report: Wireline in the second quarter 2011
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