SECURITIES
AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION
Washington,
D.C. 20549
FORM
6-K
Report
of Foreign Private Issuer
Pursuant
to Rule 13a-16 or 15d-16 of
the
Securities Exchange Act of 1934
Date of
Announcement: 09 October
2019
BT
Group plc
(Translation of
registrant's name into English)
BT
Group plc
81
Newgate Street
London
EC1A
7AJ
England
(Address of
principal executive offices)
Indicate by check
mark whether the registrant files or will file annual reports under
cover Form 20-F or Form 40-F.
Form
20-F..X...
Form 40-F
Indicate by check
mark whether the registrant by furnishing the information contained
in this Form is also thereby furnishing the information to the
Commission pursuant to Rule 12g3-2(b) under the Securities Exchange
Act of 1934.
Yes
No ..X..
If
"Yes" is marked, indicate below the file number assigned to the
registrant in connection with Rule 12g3-2(b): 82-
________
9 October 2019
BT LAUNCHES NEW PRODUCTS, SERVICES AND SKILLS PROGRAMMES TO HELP
BOOST THE UK'S POTENTIAL
●
BT Group launches
an unprecedented range of new
products, services and skills programmes to help create a better connected and more
competitive Britain
●
New converged BT
Halo products for homes and businesses to keep Britain connected with the best
networks, services and support including unlimited voice and data
at home and on the go, as well as access to 5G
●
Creating the UK's
most personal and local customer service: launching a new team of 900 Home Tech Experts to
help people with digital tech in their homes, as well as support in
the workplace; returning all customer contact centres to the UK
& Ireland 12 months earlier than planned from January 2020;
bringing the BT brand back to UK high streets in over 600 stores
and 24/7 customer support for businesses around the
world
●
Introducing 'Skills for
Tomorrow': a new online and
community training programme designed to provide essential digital
skills training for 10 million school children, families and
businesses across the UK
●
Boosting customer connections: BT
Group is investing to help build full
fibre to four million premises by March 2021 with an ambition to
reach 15 million by mid-2020's; while BT is upgrading 700,000 of its
home and business customers to superfast broadband by June 2020 at
no extra charge, launching 5G
on BT, and will be launching new Full Fibre plans in
November
●
New
Partnerships: BT is now the lead partner to
all UK Home Nations Football Associations; launching a new and unique partnership
with Apprentice
Nation to inspire more
apprentices
Wednesday, 9 October
2019 - BT is launching an
unprecedented range of new products, services and skills programmes
to help customers across the UK and beyond realise their potential.
The announcements today are part of BT's ongoing transformation and
will improve mobile and fixed connectivity, set a new standard
for
customer experience, and provide digital skills
for 10 million people and businesses. BT is also changing the way
people and businesses interact with its products and services on
the high street, in communities, within the workplace and even in
people's homes.
"We're
helping families and communities across the UK, and companies in
Britain and around the world, to remove the barriers of today to
realise the potential of tomorrow," said Philip Jansen, Chief
Executive of BT. "We're starting a journey today with real changes
that will have a positive impact for people and businesses
-
connecting
more customers to full fibre, boosting customers' speeds right
across the UK, keeping customers connected wherever they are with
our new converged Halo products, and helping to give them the
skills to make the most of today's connected world."
Keeping customers connected with the best converged products from
BT
●
Launching the UK's
best converged plan, Halo from BT. With more than one million homes connected
to BT's flagship converged plan BT Plus, BT is launching Halo from
BT to provide even better connections and service to customers
across the UK. Halo customers can benefit from unlimited data and
calls on mobile and at home, inclusive support from BT's new team
of Home Tech Experts to get all of their technology running, and
Plus/Halo customers will be the first BT customers to be able to
upgrade to 5G from Friday 11 October. Customers who sign up for 5G
and Plus plans will be upgraded to Halo from November. More about
Halo will be announced in the coming weeks.
●
Introducing Halo
for Business. BT is the
first provider to offer SMEs Superfast Broadband with a
future-ready digital phone line which provides small businesses
with a range of services that aren't available on legacy phone
lines. Halo for Business includes an always connected guarantee and
customers can add 4G and 5G mobile connections. Businesses can make
and receive calls on their landline number straight from their
smartphone, so they needn't worry about missing an important call
when out and about. The service is backed up by 24/7 UK based
customer service support and comes with a fixed price promise for
the duration of the contract.
●
Next generation
cloud connections for enterprise. BT is introducing the next generation of
connectivity for larger businesses, delivered through flexible,
software defined wide area networks (SD WAN). Designed to support
UK businesses with multiple office branches, the new service will
deliver secure, high-bandwidth connectivity to businesses and gives
them greater visibility and control of their critical applications.
BT is transforming its support for multinational customers from
physical infrastructure to cloud services that give customers
around the world the highest levels of flexibility and
security.
Reinventing customer service to provide the UK's best
experience
BT
is reinventing what it means to provide great customer service,
using its national scale and local presence across the UK to
provide customers with the best possible experience. Feedback from
customers has continued to reflect the need for customer service to
be closer to their communities so they have the local
knowledge
they need to resolve issues as quickly as possible.
●
Launching a new
team of Home Tech Experts,
creating a team of 900 experts who will help customers in their
homes across the UK. BT customers will be able to book appointments
to get help installing the latest tech or fixing problems. The team
of experts is trained on a wide range of technology topics, as well
as how to help vulnerable customers.
●
Introducing a new
team of specialist Tech Experts for small business
customers. This team will carry
out personalised set-up of products and services that are most
critical to the running of each customer's
business.
●
Accelerating its
promise to answer all its customer calls in the UK and
Ireland, with 100% being
answered in the UK and Ireland from January 2020, a year ahead of
original schedule.
●
Launching Regional
Call Routing, where BT will
answer customer calls in the customer service centre closest to
them wherever possible - providing the best service experience with
local knowledge.
●
The BT brand
returns to the high street to provide personal help within 20
minutes' drive of 95% of the UK
population. The BT brand
is returning to the high street, transforming 600 EE stores into
dual branded stores across the UK for the first time, providing
consumer and small business customers local access to experts who
can help with everything from getting online for the first time to
the latest in smart home technology.
●
The UK's best
business support. For
business customers of all sizes in the UK and beyond, BT is
investing and using its local presence to provide the best
collaboration, connectivity, and security services, with 24/7
customer support anywhere in the world through new business support
teams.
Providing training and skills to help Britain break down
barriers
The UK faces an alarming digital skills gap, which
is having a profound impact on our country. Millions of
people and a significant number of businesses across the UK lack
the essential digital skills they need, which risks widening social
divides and has an estimated £63bn1 annual
impact on the UK's competitiveness.
BT Group is launching Skills for Tomorrow, a new digital skills
programme to help 10m people, families and businesses across the UK
get the skills they need by 2025.
●
For
teachers: BT is providing digital skills
and computing training for a further 3 million
children by 2025 in
partnership with Computing at School, through the highly successful
Barefoot computing programme. The programme has already helped more
than 70,000 primary school teachers and 2 million children to learn
computational thinking and the computing
curriculum.
●
For young
people: By 2025, BT's Work
Ready programme will help a further 5,000 18-24 year
olds not currently in
education, employment or training acquire new skills, work
experience, and ready them for employment or further education.
2,700 young people have completed the BT Work Ready programme to
date.
●
For older, more
vulnerable, and digitally excluded people: 90 BT sponsored community
training centres will be
launched across the UK in partnership with the Good Things
Foundation to help people with face to face support and
training.
●
For
businesses: Ambition to
provide digital skills training to one million small business
owners and employees by
2025 through working with partners including Google Digital Garage,
LinkedIn and more.
●
For
families: New training, resources and activities to give
parents and children more confidence in using digital tech and help
bring digital skills thinking into the home.
Connecting customers to the UK's best network
BT Group continues to invest in full fibre to help
connect more homes and businesses, with an ambition to reach 15m
homes and businesses by the mid-2020's2,
and working closely with the industry, Government and regulators to
accelerate roll-out further. Openreach is building the full fibre
network to reach 4 million
premises across more than 100 towns, cities and
boroughs by the end of March 2021.
1 https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201617/cmselect/cmsctech/270/270.pdf
2 As
announced at the company's 2018/19 full year results on 9 May 2019,
and subject to the right regulatory and public policy
conditions
While the full fibre network is expanded, BT is connecting people
and businesses across the UK to the best possible network, creating
the UK's most advanced network and phasing out old, legacy
technologies. BT is investing in a network that is ready for
the future - with 5G, full fibre, and the new high definition
Digital
Voice services connecting millions of homes and businesses to
advanced converged networks across the UK by
2025.
●
Upgrading 700,000
homes and businesses to Superfast Broadband by summer 2020 at no extra cost, giving
customers faster, more reliable connections - boosting their
average speeds from around 10Mbps to 50Mbps and providing better
Wi-Fi through upgraded Smart Hubs. BT will stop selling standard
broadband connections on the legacy BT copper network to 90% of the
UK. For the 10% that cannot get superfast connections today, BT
will use all available technologies to provide the fastest
connections possible including 4G and 5G broadband, and full
fibre.
●
Becoming one of the
first mobile providers in the UK to launch 5G mobile
plans, ahead of other major
networks, giving people and businesses faster, more reliable mobile
connections from Friday 11 October. Built on the EE 5G network, the
first and largest in the UK, customers in London, Birmingham,
Cardiff, Manchester, Edinburgh and Belfast can enjoy speeds
typically 100-150 Mbps faster than 4G connections even in the
busiest areas.
●
Launching 4G and 5G
broadband solutions for small businesses in October that will deliver fibre-like
speeds to business customers who cannot access Superfast Broadband
today or who want an instant connection for temporary offices or
locations.
●
Improving the BTnet
dedicated internet access solution for
businesses to deliver even
faster speeds, greater coverage and a range of bandwidth-boosting
special offers. Complete with entry level capacity of 1Gbps,
business-grade security, managed Wi-Fi and cloud-based features,
businesses can enjoy the flexibility to grow and support more
bandwidth-heavy applications as they expand.
●
Connecting
customers to its Digital Voice network from
November, providing customers
with high definition voice and advanced home phone capabilities to
replace decades-old analogue phone lines across the UK by
2025.
New partnerships
BT
Group is also supporting skills development through its grassroots
partnership with the Home Nations Football Associations, and a new
apprenticeship training programme in partnership with Apprentice
Nation.
●
Building on BT's England FA
partnership, BT is now the lead partner to
all UK Home Nations Football Associations - partnering with Scottish FA, the FA of
Wales, and the Irish FA. Through these partnerships, BT is
connecting over 200 grassroots football clubs across the UK, and
much-needed digital skills to players, volunteers and communities.
BT will also focus on removing the barriers and limitations in
football to inspire greater participation and
opportunity.
●
Launching new
programme with Apprentice Nation to help 1000 young
people get coaching,
connect with entrepreneurs and business leaders, get tips and
discover more about apprenticeships. Apprentice Nation, from the
founders of Rock Corps, encourages apprentices of all kinds while
supporting social action projects to help local communities,
rewarding participants with exclusive, free gigs by up and coming
artists.
A new vision for BT: Beyond Limits
As part of the announcements
today, BT is also launching a new
brand purpose and identity to reflect its ambitious new approach:
Beyond Limits. Created to drive
the internal culture of BT to help people, businesses, and
communities go beyond limits - whether that be location, age,
ability, background, scale - to realise their potential. BT will
unveil its new identity with a broad internal and external
campaign, which launches from Friday 18 October.
BT's
financial outlook for the 2019/20 year remains
unchanged.
For
more information about all of the above, please visit
BT.com
Ends
For further information
Enquiries about this news release should be made
to the BT Group Newsroom 020 7356 5369. From outside the UK dial +
44 20 7356 5369. All news releases can be accessed on
BT's websiteand
you can follow BT on Twitter here.
About BT
BT's purpose is to use the power of communications to make a better
world. It is one of the world's leading providers of communications
services and solutions, serving customers in 180 countries. Its
principal activities include the provision of networked IT services
globally; local, national and international telecommunications
services to its customers for use at home, at work and on the move;
broadband, TV and internet products and services; and converged
fixed-mobile products and services. BT consists of four
customer-facing units: Consumer, Enterprise, Global and
Openreach.
For the year ended 31 March 2019, BT Group's reported revenue was
£23,428m with reported profit before taxation of
£2,666m.
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 the London stock
exchange.
For more information, visit www.btplc.com
Signatures
Pursuant to the
requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the registrant
has duly caused this report to be signed on its behalf by the
undersigned, thereunto duly authorized.
BT
Group plc
(Registrant)
By: /s/
Rachel Canham, Company Secretary
--------------------
Rachel
Canham, Company Secretary.
Date
09 October 2019
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