T-Mobile comits to BT BNS product for its backhaul

Funny that as soon as our hypothetical ISP, LUI, starts using the BT BNS product then T-Mobile responds by committing to the product for backhaul of all of its Radio Network. Of course, it won’t do anything to improve T-Mobile patchy coverage in certain areas of the country, but it will more importantly provide the bandwidth at a decent price to allow decent mobile internet speeds for the masses. All I can say is that the T-Mobile exec team must have supreme confidence in the take-up of the Web 'n' Walk product to commit to such a deal so early.

BT has cleverly designed a product which provides plenty of upgradeable bandwidth at low opex provided by Openreach and will build a managed service on top of it provided by BT Wholesale which will keep the T-Mobile cost above the EBITDA line under control and lead to plenty of depreciation below the EBITDA line and out of mind of most analysts. The BT offer will also blow away the alternatives which were a build and outsource operations to an equipment vendor perhaps using microwave technology or make a risky committment with the patchwork coverage of the altnets.

I expect to see other wins announced soon from BT with the other Mobile Operators. The Orange and Voda 3G network sharing deal is almost a perfect fit with the BT product. It is also the type of deal that fits with the already heavily outsource H3G UK business model. I'm not sure what O2 are up to these days but they seem to be a laggard in the race to a mobile internet future. 

I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised if in a years time, BT have shiny new mobile contracts for all the operators for the forseeable future.