The North West TOUCH · digital divide existed and that it was a key issue for Government, BT and the whole ... digitally excluded. The report, ‘An insight into closing the digital

government backed campaign, led by the Learning and Skills Council is urging more employers and businesses to take on apprentices especially during this downturn when the benefits of having a highly skilled workforce are more important than ever.

The message is that apprenticeships are good for business and are a sound investment. The business case for apprenticeships is compelling with many benefits including increased productivity, greater staff retention, increased profitability and more highly motivated workforces.

BT’s apprenticeship scheme was set up in 1995 and is considered to be one of the leading examples in the country. The issue of employment skills is high on the agenda for the North West and I am actively involved as Chair of the Commission for Economic Development, Employment and Skills for Manchester City region, whose priorities include the City Strategy programme, which aims through working with partner organisations and local authorities, to engage with workless residents to improve their access to work through appropriate training opportunities.

We have an ongoing commitment to continue to work with companies across the region in a practical way, to use our business knowledge and experience in these testing times and to help and encourage other businesses to flourish in support of the region’s inward investment plans and overall economic strategy.

Mike Blackburn, BT Regional Director, North West

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In today’s economic environment it is more important than ever that companies are aware of the needs of their customers. The effects of the global recession and the difficulties faced are being felt by both businesses and individuals across the North West region. In support of this and despite the economic downturn, BT has pledged to forge ahead with investment plans to spend £1.5bn to ensure that 40% of UK homes and businesses can access fibre-based services. The UK already leads in terms of DSL broadband access and penetration and I am pleased to highlight that this region will be amongst the first to benefit from this investment. By early next year we will be installing super-fast broadband in Greater Manchester to more than 140,000 customers in Bury, Oldham, Failsworth, Rusholme, Didsbury and Heaton Moor. Further details of this recent announcement, our wider strategy and progress in the North West are included in this issue.

These challenging times also give the opportunity for businesses to reassess their current working practices in order that they can become more effective, efficient and successful, whilst cutting costs. Recent research from BT shows that the credit crunch is having an impact on a growing number of small to medium-sized enterprises and through our BT local businesses in the region we are keen to continue with them to help them improve efficiency, manage costs and build new business models. In this issue we focus on some of the free initiatives and trials BT have launched to do this.

There is also an increased focus on learning and skills, and in particular an emphasis on apprenticeships. A national

For further information on what’s happening in your region visit the BT Regions website at: www.bt.com/btregions 1

In July 2002 BT launched its Digital Inclusion Campaign, a clear recognition that the digital divide existed and that it was a key issue for Government, BT and the whole communications industry to address. For BT, the causes of digital exclusion, and therefore the solution, focuses around the interconnected issues of access, motivation, skills and confidence. Over the past six years, at both a national and regional level, BT has worked with Government, NGOs, businesses and the individuals themselves, to help to tackle these issues.

To support this work and stimulate debate BT has published a new report which brings together experiences and case studies from across the UK, highlighting the challenges and impacts of the digitally excluded.

The report, ‘An insight into closing the digital divide’, shares knowledge from projects and programmes around the English regions, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland and raises questions about what needs to be done to close the gap between those who are online and those who are not.

In the North West region, Ayotunde Falana took part in the ‘Crossing the Divide’ project. Ayotunde is partially

disabled and by far the biggest benefits for him have been increased independence. Being able to use email has meant he can keep in contact with people cheaply and easily.

John Anderson, Managing Director BT Regions, who championed the report emphasised that those who are already online, now have access to a wider world of information, a greater amount of choice and a wide choice of social stimulus. He said “This report demonstrates that even the very small things can have such a huge impact on someone’s life – things which some of the most internet savvy people take for granted.”

Helen Milner, Managing Director, UK Online Centres welcomed the report and said, “BT is one of the organisations already leading the way on this agenda… I hope this report will add to the growing evidence base, and help inform the future of digital inclusion”.

To read a copy of the report in more detail please visit www.bt.com/researchandreports

An insight into closing the digital divide

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The first set of locations where substantial numbers of customers will have access to fibre-based super-fast broadband via BT’s network have now been announced. Openreach will deploy fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) technology at 29 exchanges across the uK, bringing speeds of up to 40Mb/s – and potentially 60Mb/s – within reach of 500,000 homes and businesses. In addition to the exchanges in this region, areas of Belfast, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, London, East of England and Yorkshire and The Humber will also be among the first locations to benefit from this initial deployment from early next year.

All but two of the locations are urban and we will be looking to learn lessons from deploying fibre in the rural locations of Calder Valley near Halifax and Taffs Well near Cardiff. The next set of locations – serving a further one million homes and businesses – will be announced in the autumn.

Whilst Openreach will deploy the technology, it is up to communications providers – retailers who buy services from Openreach – to develop services based on that technology for their customers.

Many other important milestones have been passed as the foundations are laid for a new flexible approach to broadband offering a mix of services to suit all tastes and pockets. At the heart of these developments, BT has now completed the transformation of the UK’s core and transmission network for its world-leading 21st Century Network (21CN).

By the end of last month, BT had enabled exchanges serving 40% of UK homes and businesses for copper-based ‘next generation’ broadband services, including more than 120,000 lines serving the North West homes and businesses.

Super-fast locations revealed

For further information on what's happening in your region visit the BT Regions website at: www.bt.com/btregions 2

Home businesses – the bright spot of the region’s economyMillions more people will earn an income from home is the message coming from the latest research report from enterprise Nation – the highly renowned home business company which hosts the uK’s largest website for people starting and growing a business from home.

Following on from last year’s BT sponsored Home Business report which named Manchester, Bolton, Preston, Stockport, Chorley, Wigan, Oldham and Rossendale in the top 50 hotspots in the country for home businesses, the predictions for 2009 are reassuringly positive.

They include:

• A significant contribution to the UK economy from home-based businesses

• Calculations on the environmental savings from homeworking

• Predictions of the high growth in self-employed and home-based enterprises as an effect of the downturn in employment opportunities.

A round table event in February with senior representatives from organisations from across the uK including, Local Authorities, enterprise Agencies, Microsoft, BT, Business Link and Academia took part in a discussion focused on looking at ways in which the home enterprise sector can improve regional engagement and encourage recognition and priority within the regional economic strategies.

Mike Blackburn BT Regional Director, North West said said “BT has invested heavily to champion the home business sector – we have made a commitment, offering the kind of expertise, advice and services that allow home businesses to focus on what they do best, whilst we take care of the technology.”

The round table was followed by the formal launch of the top 10 enterprise Nation predictions led by Mark Prisk MP shadow minister for business, enterprise and regulatory reform.

For further information and to view the latest predictions go to www.enterprisenation.com

In this region, Warrington is in the forefront of developments with 71% of the city’s phone and broadband lines now enabled for next generation services. Broadband speeds of up to 20Mbit/s are possible, which is more than twice the maximum speeds currently available to most customers. The next generation of broadband will support High Definition TV and other popular high-bandwidth service. With 90,000 UK homes and businesses each month expected to be moving to 21CN broadband this summer – the momentum is growing fast.

The UK’s broadband mix is also being enriched through the introduction by BT of 604 21CN Ethernet nodes across the country – 70 nodes here in this region. Ethernet primarily supports communications within individual corporate businesses and organisations.

BT’s 21CN is about providing broadband services for the future, many of which have not yet emerged, giving consumers more control, choice and flexibility and access to innovative, exciting software-driven applications.

The growth of BT’s broadband services marks the beginning of a new chapter in the UK’s broadband story. It’s underpinning more and more customer choice and opening the door to exciting and innovative applications.

We will continue to work in partnership to ensure that people in our region are amongst the first to benefit as we continue our roll-out plans for both 21CN and super-fast broadband.

BT has launched the 2009 BT Community Connections awards, offering laptops and broadband to community groups, to enable them to get online.

The scheme supports a diverse range of groups from silver-surfers to conservation organisations. This year more than a 1,000 awards are available. Award winners will receive a Toshiba internet-ready laptop with

12 months’ broadband internet connection.

Winners will also receive additional digital resources which will enable them to make the most of the marketing, recruitment, fundraising, communication and networking opportunities available online.

Unique to this year’s awards is the introduction of a new cluster award, which allows up to five community groups to apply together. For further information and application form visit: www.btcommunityconnections.com

Call for BT Community Connections applications

5. London and the South East will retain 1st and 2nd position

as Home Enterprise Hotspots but will be challenged by

regions running home enterprise support projects. In particular,

watch out for activity in the West Midlands.

6. The spare room will remain the most popular home

enterprise space, closely followed by the Garden WorkShed.

The free markets will respond with the demise of the

conservatory as the ‘planning free’ home extension and the most

popular home ‘add on’ will become a ‘clip on’ office/workroom.

7. By staying off the roads at peak congestion times, homeworkers

will reduce CO2 emissions by at least 18 million kg.**

8. Homeworkers will continue to use social networking to

promote their services online; we will see an increase in the

use of micro-blogging platforms, such as Twitter, in home

enterprise.

9. Handheld devices, such as smart phones, will become

a necessity for home business owners, as flexible working is

encouraged.

10. Enterprise Nation will provide information, support and

market exposure to millions of home enterprises and will

remain the UK’s leading home enterprise company.

Free business value pack BT recently launched a free Business Value Pack specifically aimed at the UK’s 4.6 million small to medium-sized businesses to help them improve efficiency, manage costs and build new business models.

The pack provides a flexible range of free-to-use or free-to-trial IT and communications services, worth up to £700. It contains special offers and best practice advice on controlling costs, winning and keeping customers, and better company management to cope with the economic downturn.

Businesses are also given access to a host of tools to help them maximise their online profiles, improve staff productivity and cut the cost of travel, energy consumption and operations. A free audio web-conferencing trial is included, as well as free membership of BT Tradespace and a free website review.

For many businesses, smart deployment of IT and communications could underpin their ability to compete and weather the storm. To find out more visit www.thrivewithbt.com

For further information on what's happening in your region visit the BT Regions website at: www.bt.com/btregions 3

In March 2008 BT was announced as the official communications services partner for the London 2012 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games. BT will be providing communications infrastructure and services required to deliver the 2012 Games. Delivering the communications services to join up the venues requires a major operation. In the 2012 Games there will be more than 14,000 athletes from more than 200 nations, taking part in nearly 700 events – not just in London, but at venues across the country, (including a number of training facilities/camps in Manchester) watched live by billions of people across the world.

Alongside other London 2012 technology partners, BT is responsible for delivering every image from the Olympic Games, every sports report, every visit to the London 2012 website and millions of calls, emails and texts.

BT is delivering communications services for mobile and fixed telephony, wide area networks, local area networks (LANs), security, cable TV feeds and transmission.

In each of the venues, we will be installing wireless access, TV feeds, internet protocol phones, games applications, and infrastructure for mobile phones. This will include the main press and broadcast centres and the athletes’ village.

Bringing it all together for the London 2012 GamesBT will also be providing the Olympic Games LAN – joining together management applications, accreditation, registration, event scheduling, results and commentary systems in conjunction with other London 2012 technology partners. This includes the provision of the administration LAN supporting the back office with internet for the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG), telephony network and cable TV. As well as technology for live sites in city centres across the regions that will become focal points for communities.

BT also hosts the London 2012 website which had its highest number of visits to date on 24 August, 2008 for the handover from Beijing to London.

Together with other regional partner organisations, BT has representation on a number of forums that have been set up to maximise opportunities.

Facts and figuresBT is providing:

• 80,000 connections across 94 different locations

• 4,500km of cabling

• 1,000 wireless access points

• 16,500 telephones

• 14,000 mobile phone SIM cards

• 14,000 cable TV outlets

• Enabling 6Gb of information to be carried each second, roughly the equivalent of the words in 6,000 novels or the music in 17 mp3 albums.

BT Local Business in the North West There are four BT Local Businesses based in the North West helping local firms manage their technology and communications. The companies based in Burscough, Preston, Salford and Warrington are independent small businesses themselves, licensed to sell BT products and services and form part of the BT Local Business [BTLB] network.

The network was established by BT Business, part of BT’s Retail Division in 2002 as a pilot scheme of six businesses. It has proved so successful that it has grown to 50 businesses covering england, Wales and Scotland.

BT research has showed the majority of SMes preferred to do business with other SMes, who understood their needs. So the network was set up to do exactly that. Its unique structure gives customers their own local service with one point of contact. It gives them the flexibility and the personal touch that only small local businesses can deliver, but with the full support and resources of BT.

The majority of small businesses in the North West prefer to do business with similar sized organisations. In total the North West BT Local Businesses provide communications advice and solutions to more than 93,000 local businesses. The four firms have a combined revenue of more than £130 million and employ a total of 145 staff.

Small businesses can find out more at: www.bt.com/btlocalbusiness or can contact their local BT Local Business by calling 0800 389 3364.

Thousands of customers across the region could potentially benefit from improved broadband performance, thanks to a simple, patented, self-install filter developed by BT called the I-Plate.It filters out electrical interference which can often slow down broadband speed and affect the stability of the connection. Extension telephone wiring, in homes and businesses, acts like a giant antennae picking up interference from TVs, lights and other everyday appliances. This can result in a significant loss of broadband performance.

Customers need to have a BT NTE 5 master socket (see picture) and extension wiring in their home to fit an I-Plate – the NTE 5 is easily identified by a horizontal split in the face plate and the BT logo. They simply unscrew the face plate of the master socket, clip the I-Plate in place and replace the face plate over it. BT trials estimate that, typically, filtered lines achieved speed increases of around 1.5Mb/s – though

Speedier broadband thanks to BT’s new ‘I-Plate’some lines achieved as much as a 4Mb/s increase. Although speed increases can not be guaranteed in every case – as the level of electrical interference varies greatly from line to line – other potential benefits include greater line stability.

Communications providers have shown considerable interest in BT I-Plate and at less than £12 each they are also available for purchase online at the BT Shop: www.shop.bt.com

For further information on what's happening in your region visit the BT Regions website at: www.bt.com/btregions

© British Telecommunicactions plc. Registered office: 81 Newgate Street, London EC1A 7AJ. Registered in England no.4190816. Produced by BT Group Communications. Designed by Tag. 4

BT partnership with Football Foundation kicks off in Manchester

North WestappointmentsSami Istephan, a member of the BT North West Regional Board, has been appointed to The university of Salford’s external Advisory Committee. The committee provides a formal channel between the university, industry, commerce and public bodies.

Commenting on the announcement Sami said “The North West Regional Board have been working with various parts of The university of Salford for some time on a variety of research and regeneration projects and this opportunity formalises our close working relationship. I’m pleased to be able to represent BT on the committee and help drive forward a rich agenda of activity around a key partnership in the North West”.

Conference boost for Liverpool In its first year, the BT-supported convention centre in Liverpool has welcomed around 71,000 delegates, hosted more than 265 events and contributed more than £200 million to the regional economy.

The BT Convention Centre sponsorship builds on a joint venture between BT and Liverpool City Council – Liverpool Direct Limited – which is helping the city transform its services.

The centre has already collected a number of industry accolades – most recently scooping the title of, ‘Best uK Venue’, at International Confex 2009. It has also won the silver award for, ‘Best uK Venue’, at the Meetings and Incentive Travel Awards.

BT regional manager Peter Connor said: “BT is delighted the centre is playing such a key role in the renaissance of Liverpool. BT is proud to continue to work in partnership to support the sustainable growth and prosperity of North West england.”

According to the centre’s general manager Jacquie Rogers, the second year is set to be just as successful. “The centre has already taken bookings for a number of high profile events,” she said.

The BT Convention Centre has been designed to be one of europe’s greenest venues. Its sustainability measures include rainwater harvesting, five wind turbines that provide 10% of base load electricity, low energy lighting and movement sensors, natural ventilation, onsite compacting and recycling, and lots of natural daylight.

Hundreds of city youngsters are being given the opportunity to get to grips with the latest technology and develop their sporting skills thanks to the £1 million UK-wide ‘Communicating for Success’ programme, spearheaded by BT and the Football Foundation.Manchester City FC is leading the local initiative, which will also involve the three ‘Manchester Playing for Success’ study centres, partnered with Sale Harriers Athletic Club.

It is one of 12 new projects funded by BT and the Football Foundation, working with sporting organisations across the UK to bring the benefits of sport and technology closer to the local communities where they are based.

In Manchester, it will focus on helping young people aged between 10 and 11 to use a variety of information and communications technology (ICT) resources to develop a programme of activities to highlight the importance of healthy eating and fitness to younger children at their own schools.

‘City in the Community’ coaches from Manchester City FC will be helping develop the sport and health programme. It will include using computer software tools like PowerPoint and developing video and editing skills to compile a DVD, explaining to six and seven year olds the importance of healthy eating and fitness.

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Prime Minister Gordon Brown visited Adastral Park, BT’s centre for research, innovation and technology in Suffolk earlier this year to launch a new training initiative for young people.The Federated Apprenticeship Scheme will offer young adults working for small to medium-sized enterprises the chance to gain a qualification in Information Communication Technology.

BT is a member of a new organisation called Innovation for the Digital Economic Age (IDEA) which has been formed with local educational bodies to collaborate on learning and skills development in the East of England. IDEA will run the trial, which will be watched with interest across the UK, with Suffolk New College and 30 apprenticeship places will be made available for the new scheme during the 2009 – 10 academic year.

“Apprenticeships bring so many benefits to everyone involved,” said the Prime Minister. “They are an effective way for businesses to

PM launches BT-backed schemeobtain the right skills to get them through the economic downturn, and offer a hand-picked, motivated workforce.

“But they are also a way for keen and hard-working young people to develop their skills and experience in a workplace environment, which will prepare and equip them for a fulfilling career.

“This scheme shows how companies working together with Government can find solutions to their skills needs and develop real opportunities for young people around them.”

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Football and other sporting skills picked up during fitness sessions with the coaches will also be incorporated into their educational programmes. Each of the participating pupils will receive a commemorative medal and sports equipment for their school.

It is expected around 350 pupils from 20 schools across South, North East and central Manchester will benefit over the next six months, experiencing a total of more than 3,600 hours of learning, sport and fun, thanks to ‘Communicating for Success’.

Mike Blackburn, BT’s North West regional director, said: “BT is determined to tackle IT illiteracy and help people of all ages and abilities prosper through confidence with communications, computers and the internet.

“The plans here in Manchester are extremely exciting and will make an important contribution to helping us achieve this goal, while delivering against a very real issue in tackling obesity.”