BT has announced it will launch BT Home Essentials in June, a market leading social tariff connecting those on low income with affordable fibre broadband and calls. The new low cost tariff comes as BT research reveals that since the pandemic, almost three quarters (74%) of Brits would not find it easy to improve their financial situation without connectivity¹, and the majority (79%) of financially vulnerable people rely on broadband connectivity to manage household finances².

Available exclusively to those on Universal Credit and a range of other means-tested benefits*, BT Home Essentials meets the demands of the modern home and provides futureproof fibre connectivity at a time when online resources have never been more important. BT research has found that three times as many people say they could not go without broadband (67%) versus public transport (20%)¹.

BT Home Essentials is a separate and improved social tariff compared to BT’s initial version, BT Basic, launched in 2008. Home Essentials provides an average of 36 Mbps download speeds and 700 minutes of calls for £15 a month, around half the price of a standard fibre and calls package. Alternatively, eligible customers can also opt for average speeds of 67 Mbps and unlimited calls for £20 per month. The lowest price equivalent standard BT broadband package costs £32.99 a month, with an additional £15 for our unlimited calls plan – this means BT Home Essentials customers choosing the £20 option can save over £330 a year.4

Marc Allera, CEO, BT’s Consumer division, said, “Fast, reliable connectivity has never been as important as it is today, with millions of people relying upon our networks to get back on their feet after the pandemic.

“We want to help as many people as we can, which is why at the end of June we’ll be launching BT Home Essentials, increasing the eligibility of our social tariff to include all customers on Universal Credit. BT Home Essentials will be available at half the price of our standard fibre package, helping a potential four million households on low income save on bills and stay connected to vital online services.”

Digital Infrastructure Minister, Matt Warman, said: “In today's digital world, everyone should be able to access fast, reliable and affordable internet, so I'm thrilled that BT is the latest provider to launch new deals for low income households.

“We have been working with internet providers to offer affordable broadband tariffs for those struggling with bills to help the UK build back fairer from the pandemic. I hope to see others taking similar action soon.”

BT also continues to work closely with Government to support families. BT’s ‘Lockdown Learning’ has provided connectivity to over 175,000 families, to help children to continue learning from home. BT Home Essentials will provide an affordable option for families to receive fast broadband for the whole household.

-Ends-

Notes to editors:

*BT Home Essentials is only for eligible customers which includes those on Universal Credit and people receiving the Guarantee Credit element of Pension Credit, Jobseeker’s Allowance, Income Support, and Employment and Support Allowance.

¹ Based on a survey interviewing a nationally representative sample of c.2,000 GB adults – April 2021

² Based on an online survey among mobile and broadband owners whose household receive a benefit or tax credit. Research conducted in March 2021 among 904 respondents

³ Based on standard pricing for BT’s equivalent broadband (Fibre Essential) and call plan packages on offer on 29 April 2021 for £27.99, with £7 for calls versus £15 for BT Home Essentials

⁴ Based on standard pricing for BT’s equivalent broadband (Fibre 2) and call plan packages on offer on 29 April 2021 for £32.99, with £15 for unlimited calls versus £20 for BT Home Essentials

Average speeds are based on speed available to at least 50% of customers at peak time (8-10pm). Actual speed will be dependent on location, phone line, home wiring, wi-fi connection and time of day. Customers can check their estimated speeds at BT.com/speed.

Launched in 2008, BT’s social tariff (BT Basic) is only available to those on the means tested benefits mentioned above, plus those on Universal Credit who receive zero income. The extended eligibility of BT Home Essentials means people on Universal Credit who also earn money can also take advantage.

Alternative industry social tariff available UK-wide:

The below details are available online and are accurate as of 29 April 2020

The virtual nature of all our lives at the moment makes internet safety more important than ever. The way we all rely on technology to stay in touch with each other, educate and entertain ourselves means keeping young people safe online has to be a top priority.

At BT, we’re more focused than ever before on doing what we do best: keeping everyone connected at an extraordinary time. Our purpose is to Connect for Good, which means, we have a responsibility to do all we can – alongside parents and teachers – to help young people stay safe when they’re using the internet.

They trust technology to keep them connected at this extraordinary time. The theme for today is An Internet We Trust, with a focus on how young people deal with misleading content online. As the father of three young boys, that’s important to me as not only a CEO, but a parent too, because I can see first-hand how technology is helping them to keep up with their lives.

At BT we recognise the challenges that families are facing. We have all had to adapt. But it’s particularly challenging for young people who feel they are missing out on so much while we are forced to be apart. In research we conducted with parents earlier this year, we found that:
 

• 72% said Covid had made their children more reliant on technology

• 61% of parents worry about the safety and security of their children online

• 83% of parents believe it is important for their children to learn digital skills to help them thrive in the future

• Only 45% know where to access resources to help their children develop these skills
 

BT has an important role in helping young people explore and enjoy the online world safely. So we have committed to helping in four key ways:

1. We have a range of tools to help you keep your family safe, including Set up Safe – which helps our EE customers easily set up parental controls when buying a phone for a child. BT Halo, meanwhile, enables our BT broadband customers to pause WiFi and control screen time on each connected device. It’s a more effective method than the man who took his router for a walk in the Peak District when his children refused to join him!

2. Second, in partnership with Internet Matters, which we co-founded in 2014, our Skills for Tomorrow programme offers a wide range of advice for parents and families on managing online risks and supporting children’s digital wellbeing. Our ambition with Skills for Tomorrow is to help 10 million develop the skills they need to make the most of life in the digital world.

3. For Safer Internet Day – as part of our Barefoot Computing programme in partnership with Computing at School – we have launched a new interactive game to help teach children about the risks of online scams through play. In this game children explore an underwater world, learning about some of the common techniques used by online criminals and how they can protect themselves from falling prey to the ‘Phisherman’.

I recently read a story about a young student who changed his name on Zoom to ‘reconnecting’ so that he wouldn’t have to answer any questions in his online lessons. It’s a reminder that things are not always as they seem online!

4. We know that for some children, however, just getting online in the first place can be a challenge – particularly during a pandemic for families without adequate access to connectivity.

So last month we launched BT’s ‘Lockdown Learning’ support scheme. In partnership with the Department for Education, we’re offering free unlimited mobile data for families and carers supporting children who need it most. Schools can also apply for free WiFi vouchers for pupils without connectivity. These vouchers will provide access to 5 million BT WiFi hotspots across the UK. And we’ve zero-rated BBC Bitesize and Oak Academy educational websites – enabling everyone to access them, even if they have run out of data.

Our job’s far from finished, however. We know there is still more we can all do to help keep children connected and safe online. This is something we need to work together on across our industry, and with government and the third sector.

We welcome the Government’s work to provide a robust regulatory framework through the Online Harms Bill, which will provide helpful guiderails. Within those, our industry can continue to evolve its approach to protect the most vulnerable internet users, including children.

Part of building An Internet We Trust is listening to young people and their views on what a safer internet means for them. That’s what I’m most looking forward to on Safer Internet Day, because it should be a platform for young people, too.

So I will sign off by asking two things. For the young people out there: keep connecting with each other, and keep showing the resilience and kindness online that you’ve shown over the past year.

And for families, carers, industry and government: work with us at BT to help young people connect to the things that matter the most. And, most importantly, to help them do so safely.

Follow me on Twitter and Instagram @marcallera

Providing our BT, EE and Plusnet customers with the best service has never been so important in what has been an extraordinary 12 months. With 100% of our frontline people based across many sites in the UK and Ireland, we have been able to maintain resilience in the face of the Coronavirus crisis where others have not. And that has helped us keep our customers connected when they need it most to employment, education, entertainment – all of which drove a surge in demand for connectivity triggered by the first lockdown last March – and, most importantly, to each other.

So, what has that enabled us to do over the past year? 

From Dundee to Plymouth, Sheffield to Glasgow, and Merthyr to Enniskillen we employ more than 11,000 customer service advisors. Between them, they have answered 34 million calls in the past 12 months alone. That’s down from 38 million the previous year because we are better placed to help our customers when they first call, reducing the number of times they need to pick up the phone to get in touch.

And they haven’t stopped there. Colleagues up and down the country have taken the opportunity to get involved their local communities to make a difference and support those who have been worst hit by effects of the pandemic. Our Care Home Companion initiative was born out of our contact centre in Darlington, with my colleagues using their professional communication skills and volunteering time to have regular conversations care home residents isolated by the pandemic feel less lonely. 

We are now rolling Care Home Companion out across the country, with calls happening in Gosforth, Darlington, North Tyneside, Sheffield and Leeds. Our people have already made 2,000 calls – each one an important social lifeline to a member of their community. And new partnerships are underway in Middlesbrough, South Shields and Enniskillen, with 600 colleagues volunteering to get involved. 

We have also made huge improvements in the way we handle issues when things go wrong*. We have reduced the number of Ofcom complaints so that we are consistently below industry average. And all while customer usage has doubled on our fixed network. A great example of that is the average household using more than 50% more data YoY to 15GB across Christmas and Boxing Day in 2020 – enough to stream 5,000 films on Netflix. They are there when you need them most. On Christmas Day last year, for example, my BT and EE call centre colleagues helped nearly 9,000 customers.

We have come a long way in a short time. We know our customers value speaking to someone who understands their issue down to the regional differences that make us so great as a country, whether that’s expert help with tech or chat about the local football team. Now our customers can be called ‘Duck’ in Sheffield, ‘La’ in Liverpool and ‘Pet’ in Newcastle.

This level of personal and local support is important for every customer but no more so than the many vulnerable customers and their carers that we serve. And that brings me back to what a lifeline our people have been for our customers during the pandemic.

Coronavirus continuity

When the world changed for us all last spring, we were able to meet the enormous technical, logistical, and regulatory challenges that arise in giving such a large number of our people the option of home working. We could only do that because 100% of our frontline people are based across many sites in the UK and Ireland, not only keeping our people safe, but also enabling us to maintain our customer service continuity.Our people showed amazing resilience and we completed a massive logistical challenge to equip every colleague who wanted to work from home with the technology, security and equipment to do so. I couldn’t be prouder of how my colleagues rose to this challenge, keeping our customers connected with the help they need so they don’t have to leave their homes.They are all walking, talking examples of BT’s ambition to connect for good. 

Marc Allera, CEO, BT’s Consumer brands

Follow me on Twitter and Instagram at @marcallera

*Complaint handling complaints have reduced from 1,168 per 100k to 922 per 100k

Today, we are announcing that EE has switched on a 5G network in 13 new towns across the UK, bringing 5G to 125 places in total. And that brings me to a crucial point. Behind reliability sits credibility; before we ask our customers to rely on our network, they must be able to trust the information they are told about it.

When EE announces it has switched on a new place with 5G, there must be meaningful levels of coverage there, which we assess with clear benchmarks and strict criteria which need to be met. During our initial 5G rollout, we are only announcing places with a minimum population of 10,000 people, within which we must be delivering 5G coverage to at least a third of that local population as well as the centre of the location. Once announced this is really only the start for 5G coverage as we continue to invest and grow coverage in those towns and cities. For example, since we launched our 5G in Belfast, Cardiff and Edinburgh, we’ve more than doubled the amount of 5G sites in those cities.

I’m often asked, why bother with any criteria, why not just announce when even one site is live somewhere? Well, we believe customers need to trust our network, so their experience matches their expectations. We could loosen our criteria like some competitors; to be honest, it’s tempting, by so doing we would reveal 5G is actually in around 200 unique locations across the UK. However, we believe our claims should be as credible as our 5G is usable. We do not take our customers’ experience for granted.

Why does this matter? We know, through independent analysts, that networks which rush to announce places without proper coverage can offer a much narrower customer experience. For example, test results suggest that one rival’s network, which currently purports to have the highest number of 5G locations in the UK, actually has coverage levels lower than EE’s in many of those. Analysis from 2020 showed that they also suffered from the highest level of congestion among the major UK MNOs on the 5G they did have, slowing by more than 36% during peak hours.

Another rival, which recently claimed the best 5G in London, was quoting the results of a report that tested mainly only where they had strong signal, rather than capturing the wider area. In reality, we know our 5G network has a significantly larger footprint throughout London, with similar coverage leads reflected across other capitals, major cities and towns throughout the UK.

Or take a third rival, that claims to be the ‘best network’ before telling you, in the small print, it’s actually an award for customer service. (Though, one year into bringing all of our contact centres back to the UK, we are pushing them close on that front too.)

The lack of consistency in how, where and when networks claim to have 5G is frustrating. Yes, it’s frustrating to us; every fair and meaningful award for network coverage EE repeatedly wins. But it’s also frustrating for customers, who might buy into a claim only to be disappointed with the actual coverage they receive. It’s an area we are keen to address and are already working with Ofcom to monitor.

And this brings me back to reliability. It's not just about the number of towns and cities – although our expanding network means our customers still have access to the most extensive 5G coverage in the UK - it's the quality and availability of your 5G connection that counts.

Marc Allera, CEO Consumer Division, BT Group. Follow me on Twitter and Instagram @MarcAllera