- The Joint Venture between BT and OnePhone Holding AB leverages ECT applications to offer converged fixed-mobile virtual PBX services to small and medium-sized businesses in the UK. In just seven years of operation, BT One Phone rapidly acquired subscribers, attaining both profitability and substantial revenue growth.
- Fredrik Zetterlund, founder and former Executive Vice President and Group CTO of OnePhone Holding, says that agile and cost-effective co-development with ECT facilitates BT One Phone’s rapid growth in a wide range of segments.
- Chris Sims, Managing Director of SoHo (Single/Small office, Home office) within BT Enterprise, sees BT One Phone as a key example of BT Enterprise’s progress in developing a convergent service portfolio which is one of its key goals.
Munich, September 27th, 2021 ECT (European Computer Telecoms AG), provider of low-code technology and agile co-development dedicated to better business outcomes for CSPs and their customers, has been partnering for over 13 years with OnePhone Holding AB, a Swedish company formed to commercialize converged communications solutions. BT One Phone provides innovative converged virtual PBX (VPBX) services to the UK’s small to medium-sized businesses and is a joint venture (JV) between BT, the UK’s leading telecommunications and network provider, and the OnePhone Holding. This September, BT is finalizing the full ownership of the JV after purchasing the remaining 30% share of the Holding for 97M GBP. The latter is reportedly based on two independent company evaluations which determined the JV to have a total company value in excess of 320M GBP. BT One Phone’s revenues grew +38% for FY19-20 and the company is profitable. ECT provided the core technology, co-development and support behind BT One Phone’s VPBX product.
BT’s Motivation for the Buyout
As reported by TelcoTitans.com’s BTWatch, Chris Sims, Managing Director of SoHo (Single/Small office, Home office) within BT Enterprise “talked-up… BT One Phone, which virtualizes the PBX and is driving contract durations up substantially in the sector.” Sims pointed to the JV “during a 2019 Enterprise Business Briefing as a key example of BT Enterprise’s progress in developing a converged services portfolio – one of the division’s top strategic priorities.”
The Technology Behind This Success Story According to OnePhone Holding
“With ECT, we developed and provided market-leading services cost-effectively,” said Fredrik Zetterlund, founder and former Executive Vice President, and Group CTO of OnePhone Holding. “This facilitated market entry and rapid growth in a wide range of segments, from small enterprises to large government contracts. In several cases, ECT’s agility was key to securing new business, whether due to changing needs or requirements of a specific customer segment”, added Zetterlund, making reference to a contract won by BT One Phone with the help of ECT, with which BT provided an individualized solution to Her Majesty’s Prison Service during the pandemic. Using low code, ECT was able to individualize the OnePhone product in a matter of days and provided the solution as part of ECT’s complementary efforts to support subscriber acquisition and retention.
“During more than a decade, ECT supported our technology transition from legacy to IP, from 2G to 4G/5G and from hardware to software-based functionality,” said Fredrik regarding modernization of their services during a long and successful partnership with ECT. “Crucially, ECT delivered very high performance in terms of resilience, stability and availability, which in our experience is unparalleled,” continued the OnePhone Group CTO. “This reliability is fundamental to sustaining a leading cloud-based telecoms service while also growing fast.”
ECT looks forward to continuing the BT One Phone success story for many years to come. ECT CEO, Marshall E. Kavesh, stresses how “everyone at ECT is extremely proud of the success of OnePhone Holding and BT One Phone. It is yet another example of how CSPs create real shareholder value by offering their own unique and individualized enterprise services instead of just reselling third-party products. This is the better business outcome, for which we are always striving with our low code technology and our collaboration with CSPs.”
About ECT (European Computer Telecoms AG):
ECT is a tech company dedicated to better business outcomes for communications service providers (CSPs) and their customers. With our Telecoms Low-Code Application Platform (T-LCAP), Packaged Business Capabilities (PBCs), ready-to-use apps and agile co-development, we enable CSPs to compose, enhance and individualize telecoms services and products implemented within their telecoms network. We believe that business customers are ready to pay a premium price for reliable, individualized services, continuously evolving in cooperation with their trusted CSP. Toward this end, we collaborate with CSPs long-term and continuously, responding agilely to new and changing use cases, requests from individual customers, and emerging opportunities. Research and development are also a top ECT priority: we consult closely with leading analysts, implement emerging technologies and products early, and then test their viability together with the CSPs in our ecosystem. In addition to our own direct sales and service, primarily in Europe, we also partner with Nokia Networks which offers our products and services worldwide. Together with our clients and our partner Nokia, we at ECT enjoy meeting challenges and creating opportunities.
Founded in 1998, ECT is an unlisted German public company with its headquarters in Munich, Germany and wholly-owned sales and service subsidiaries in England, The Netherlands and the USA.
For more information about ECT, please visit ect-telecoms.com.