BT Yahoo! Broadband goes live

Gunning for AOL

By Tim Richardson • Get more from this author

Posted in Telecoms, 2nd September 2003 10:09 GMT

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BT and Yahoo! are to splurge more than £10 million over the next six months plugging their new broadband service.

From today, punters signing up for BT's ISP ADSL service will be hooked up to BT Yahoo! Broadband instead of the now kicked-into-touch BT Openworld. At £29.99 a month, BT Yahoo! Broadband is the same price as the offering from BT Openworld.

Existing BT Openworld customers can migrate to the new service - if they want - to take advantage of all the content and services brought to the table by Yahoo!.

BT Openworld punters will retain their existing email addresses. New BT Yahoo! punters will get a "btinternet.com" addy.

BT's decision to team up with Yahoo! was announced in the summer and marks yet another strategic direction for the monster telco. By concentrating on providing access - while its well-known partner supplies the content - both parties are targeting mass-market content-rich providers such as AOL.

Indeed, BT and Yahoo! have high hopes for their alliance. Duncan Ingram, MD of BT Openworld, reckons that the launch of BT Yahoo! Broadband, ensures that the couple are "stealing a march on [its] competitors" and "elevating the whole online experience to a completely new level".

Mark Opzoomer, MD and Regional VP of Yahoo! Europe, reckons punters are gonna get a terrific deal because "there are no two bigger, more trusted and more dynamic names in this market than BT and Yahoo!"

Hang on a mo. Isn't BT Openworld the most complained-about ISP in the UK, according to official stats published by telecoms regulator Oftel? ®