BT Challenges VoIP Providers

Unlike many of its counterparts around the globe, BT Group, the United Kingdom’s largest telecommunications carrier, has embarked on a plan to use its ownership of the country’s largest broadband network to challenge VoIP service providers such as eBay’s Skype division. “Whether Skype’s business model is sustainable or not is yet to be determined,” said Gavin Patterson, BT’s managing director of consumer and ventures. “But this is our wakeup call. Rather than let VoIP be done to us, it is our single-minded intent that we transform our own business behind it and use it as a way of increasing our customer base on other people’s networks too.”