British fixed line incumbent BT Group has reported revenues of GBP4.381 billion (USD6.703 billion) for the second quarter of its fiscal year, roughly unchanged when compared to sales of GBP4.383 billion in the year-ago period. The lion’s share of revenues (GBP1.559 billion) in the three months ended 30 September 2015 were generated by the BT Global services division, followed by infrastructure arm Openreach (GBP1.267 billion) and BT Consumer (GBP1.267 billion). EBITDA for fiscal Q2 dropped 1% to GBP1.442 billion, while BT’s adjusted profit before tax for the quarter edged up 2% to GBP706 million; reported profit before tax jumped 14% to GBP642 million.
In operational terms, BT reported 7.879 million retail broadband lines at 30 September, of which 3.438 million were fibre-optic connections – representing net fibre additions of 212,000 quarter-on-quarter. Fixed voice customers dropped 52,000 q-o-q to 9.522 million, while IPTV subscribers jumped 106,000 in the three months under review, to reach 1.308 million.
Gavin Patterson, BT Group CEO, commented: ‘Fibre broadband is a success story and we continue to invest heavily to help the UK remain a broadband leader among major European nations. Our open access fibre network now passes 24 million premises and we are not stopping there. We want to get fibre broadband to as many people as possible and we are also pushing ahead with our plans to get ultrafast broadband to ten million premises by the end of 2020. Market-wide demand for fibre remains strong with fibre net additions up 21% as we hit the five million milestone for homes and businesses connected’.