BT Retail to split into two separate, streamlined, businesses from September

BT Retail, the division of UK telecoms provider BT Group that looks after consumers and small businesses, will split into two distinct units from September in order to better service its customers, the company said.

The resulting units, BT Consumer and BT Business, will then focus on their own respective core areas, which are pretty self-explanatory. One of the key goals for creating the consumer unit is to drive adoption of broadband-based services, while the onus on the business side of things is to create a unified, go-to business brand.

The consumer side of BT Retail is currently made up of BT Consumer, BT Business (which supplies SMEs), BT Enterprises and BT Ireland. The BT WiFi service and parts of BT Ireland will transfer to the new BT Consumer group, while the other units will run under BT Business.

The CEO of BT Consumer will be John Petter, currently managing director of the Consumer unit within BT Retail. The CEO of BT Business will be Graham Sutherland, currently managing director of the Business unit within BT Retail.

Gavin Patterson, currently CEO of BT Retail said:

“BT Retail has delivered well for many years now contributing strong profits to the group. It is time however for the business to be split in two given the intensely competitive nature of the consumer market and our strong ambitions in the business space.”

Patterson himself will be taking over BT’s top dog role as chief executive of BT Group when Ian Livingston steps down in September to take a role in the UK government.

The significant rejig in both personnel and structure comes as competition intensifies for the telco on all sides. In one corner, the company is battling for broadband users with the likes of TalkTalk, Virgin Media and Sky and in the other it’s also trying to attract new customers to its BT Vision TV service by offering free sports packages to people that take out Infinity fiber broadband contracts.

Rest easy though, consumers, a BT spokesman reassured The Next Web that the changes are organizational only and wouldn’t see changes to any services in the immediate future.

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