BT matches analysts' forecasts

UK telecoms firm BT has upped its revenue by three percent in its first quarter, in line with analysts' expectations.

Revenues hit £5bn and earnings before deductions were £1.4bn also up 3 per cent.

The results also show that networked IT services now make up 60 per cent of corporate revenue.

Trials of the company's 24Mb/sec ADSL service have gone well, with a nationwide commercial launch expected early next year.

Overall, ADSL connections are up to 11.2 million, including 2.4 million local loop unbundled - 55,000 of those unbundled customers were previously carried on BT's network, but have been unbundled as more exchanges have opened up.

BT's Vision isn't doing quite so well, though the return only states that "roll out continues as planned". BT chief executive Ben Verwaayen admitted subscriber numbers are around 20,000. It hopes to reach its target of 100,000 customers by the end of the year.

21CN, BT's next generation network, is also progressing well. The trial network has now handled over 160 million calls, and deployment of the real thing under way. ®