BT bowls back into the mobile game

By Matt Whipp

Posted on 29 Jul 2003 at 17:10

BT has bounced back into the mobile market with a service using T-Mobile's network.

'It's BT - people expect a mobile option,' a spokesperson told us as the reason for BT's formal re-entry into the consumer mobile marketplace - a division which it hopes will net some £300m by 2005.

No doubt a number of factors will have prompted the company to pull another udder on its fixed line cash cow. The deregulation of UK fixed line telecoms, which has allowed the likes of Carphone Warehouse to offer competing fixed line services (over BT's network), falling mobile call costs, and a mobile generation raised with no need of a land line, will all have contributed to turn BT's eye back to mobile.

The BT Mobile Home Plan then, seeks to associate fixed and mobile services, aiding the company towards its goal of communications convergence. It offers mobile deals with free sub-two-minute calls to a home landline - leaning on its dominant position in landlines to persuade families to kit out offspring with a BT mobile and giving them the security that there's no excuse not to call home.

Tariffs offer a fixed number of call minutes a month and a £15 a month line rental for the principle mobile, with up to five further mobiles at £10 a month line rental. Call minutes can be shared across the family, so if little Johnny natters the time away, Mum or Dad will be the purse-string holders nagged to bump up the tariff. 'It's always good to keep in with the bill-payer,' said a BT spokesperson of the strategy. It is also possible to set different time limits for each handsets.

BT's erstwhile subsidiary mmO2 will not be so upbeat about the news. It was the chosen operator for BT's initial low-key foray back into mobile last October, with the Mobile Sense service. But not so for BT Mobile Home Plan. 'We could have picked anyone, really. But T-Mobile was the best fit for us,' we were told.

BT also announced trials of a Sony Ericsson 'Bluephone'. This is a Bluetooth-enabled mobile phone and home access point that makes normal mobile calls over a GSM network when out and about, but when in range of the access point it will make IP calls over BT's fixed line network.

Again it's yet more evidence of BT's goal of convergence, and the company foresees a handset that acts as a handset for voice calls, as well as a tool for Web browsing and data services, whether on a wireless connection to a land line or mobile network, or to the Internet from a home network or hot-spot.