BT targets Africa for growth

British Telecom (BT) has unveiled a new drive for growth in the high-growth markets of Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, and Africa, with a plan to accelerate its expansion in these regions.

By hiring more people in the region, launching more competitive capabilities across a larger number of countries and delivering a differentiated service experience, BT will be in a strong position to capture opportunities in a total AMEA market evaluated at around 32 bn GBP .

"This new phase of investments builds on the success of earlier programmes announced in 2010 for the Asia Pacific region and in 2012 for Turkey, the Middle East and Africa. Earlier this year, BT brought those regions together into a single integrated market unit to better address the needs of a new generation of regional multinationals and big domestic players that are increasingly expanding from China and India into the Middle East and Africa. The combined geography is expected to generate 44% of the global GDP growth by 2025 , with 3 bn people expected to enter the middle class over the next decade," according to a media release.

"400+ new people focused on regional business growth across all key markets, including Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Turkey," the company said in its statment

"New hires will include industry specialists focused on sectors such as logistics, healthcare, consumer packaged goods and financial services, and professional services experts based in 11 countries. These hires will be additional to the 600 positions announced earlier this year for BT's Global Development Centre in Bangalore and to the c.600 hires expected for BT's new Global Shared Service facility in Kuala Lumpur announced in April," it said.

"Securing new value added services licenses in various countries, enabling an extended portfolio offering. Better infrastructure through five new IP and Ethernet Points of Presence starting with India and Turkey, four Network-to-Network Interfaces (NNIs) with the first in Indonesia, and an enhanced satellite capability to support remote coverage and disaster recovery," the company said in a media release.

"Stronger portfolio capabilities in the fields of security, cloud, unified communications, mobility and contact centres. New sector solutions in domains such as health analytics, a suite of Point of Sale solutions for the retail sector and high performance supply chain management services," the company said.

"Field services delivered directly by BT engineers in India, Singapore, Hong Kong, China, Japan, Turkey, Indonesia and South Africa. A new strategic service assurance centre in Malaysia, providing 24x7 incident management capabilities for complex contracts" said it said.

"Over the past 12 months, BT has launched numerous new offerings and service enhancements to its already broad portfolio of services in Asia Pacific. The new investments announced today across the wider AMEA region show that BT does not rest on its laurels but continues to strive for service excellence to better serve its customers," said Charles Anderson, associate VP and head of telecoms & Mobility at IDC Asia Pacific.

"In 2010 we launched our first phase of investments to accelerate our expansion in Asia Pacific. This has allowed us to generate strong growth in the region and to nearly triple the number of new Asia Pacific customers signing with us. We are investing again to further grow our business, in a wider region combining Asia Pacific with Turkey, the Middle East and Africa" said Luis Alvarez, chief executive officer, BT Global Services.