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It seems like only yesterday that BT was overhauling its corporate brand with a strange 'piping' figure. In fact it was twelve years ago and BT bosses have decided another change of logo is in order.

What is the new design? As you can see, BT has gone 'in-house' and adopted the BT Openworld logo for the company as a whole.

The 'connected world' globe was originally developed for BT by the design company Wolff Ollins. According to BT's market research, the image conveys a desirable message about BT in all sectors and countries and is likely to be approved by all sections of its customer base.

'BT's business and its culture is changing,' said BT's chief executive, Ben Verwaayen, announcing the change, 'so it is important that we have a brand identity that represents the multi-faceted nature of our business. The new logo does the job. It represents BT as being in-tune with the multimedia age as well as communicating the company's international reach.

'We are not changing image for the sake of change,' Verwaayen insists. 'It is more fundamental than that. There will be no big bang advertising campaign.

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The new brand will be delivered through the service that customers experience every day. We want people to experience the new BT through improved service not through a new logo. Only then will they credit BT with having changed.'

The piper logo was first introduced in 1991 - when British Telecom officially became BT - and was 'refreshed' in 1999 when the blue and red colouring was tweaked. Older readers will remember the yellow and blue, square lettering of British Telecom, which was introduced back in 1980.

The cost of the rebranding exercise will be around £5m.

Moving away from logos and corporate identities, there was less positive news for BT today in the form an announcement from Oftel.

The telecoms regular officially announced a milestone figure for the take-up up of CPS (Carrier Pre-Selection). This is a service that enables consumers and businesses to use an alternative phone company to BT without changing their phone line and without dialling extra numbers.

Introduced in April 2000 as a measure to bring price competition to the fixed line market, it seems one million people have now pursued alternatives to BT, taking services from companies such as Colt, Energis, One.Tel and VarTec,

On its Web site, Oftel provides a list of CPS Operators and a consumer guide to CPS.