Profit at BT’s Irish unit rose by 14 per cent in six months, despite a drop in revenue, the company said today.
The company said “challenging market conditions” were to blame for a 4 per cent decline in underlying revenue, which was £373.6 million for the six months ended September 30th.
However, a reduction in gross managed costs of 14 per cent helped push the division to profit.
BT Ireland chief executive Graham Sutherland said the company was making “strong progress”.
“Revenues remain under pressure because of the challenging economic conditions, but by investing where our customers want us to invest and innovate, we are securing a healthy volume of contracts with business, government and wholesale customers,” he said.
The company secured a number of contracts that it described as significant, with companies such as Ebay, VHI Healthcare, Danske Bank and Glanbia. It was also involved in the implementation of the State’s emergency call answering service.
The wholesale division also performed strongly. BT Ireland delivers services for a number of communications companies in the Irish market including 3 Ireland, Telefonica O2 Ireland, UPC, and Vodafone Ireland. BT Ireland has invested in its network infrastructure throughout the country, including extending its 24Mb broadband to more than 500,000 lines and building 150 ethernet nodes to bring speeds of up to 10Gbps to customers.
“There is a lot of rhetoric at present in Ireland around next generation networks. These advanced networks are essential for consumers and businesses, for attracting foreign direct investment, for e-government services and so on,” Mr Sutherland said.
“A competitive market, backed up by clear and consistent pro-competition policies set by the State, promotes investment and innovation by the private sector. Competition is having a positive effect in this market, as evidenced by the increased choice for consumers and businesses, and as such we are looking to further expand our fibre network into urban and rural locations.”