BT Latin America completes a succesful first year after Comsat International acquisition

BT has announced today that its Latin Americn organization has succesfully completed its first year after the completion of the acquisition of Comsat International and has achieved the goal of reinforcing BT’s global capabilities to better serve its customers in the region.

With the acquisition of Comsat on the14 June of 2007, in the fiscal year ended 31st March 2008, BT Latin America revenues grew by 34% to $269 million, when compared like-for-like to the previous year, in which BT and Comsat International were separate groups. BT Latin America achieved a positive EBITDA.

João Macias, Vice President for BT Global Services Latin America, said: “Our strong performance in the region reflects the synergy we have obtained with the integration of Comsat into BT’s Latin American organisation, as well as the spectacular response we have been receiving from customers, from governments to local or international companies, which need more than just connecting their Latin American offices to global business or corporate networks and who very clearly understand the advantages of our global sourcing services.”

As a business carrier, BT has significantly improved its infrastructure with the acquisition of Comsat. Comsat has brought a highly qualified professional team and a comprehensive infrastructure throughout the Latin American region. BT now operates an extensive 180 POP pan-regional network covering Latin America, supplemented by VSAT satellite capabilities providing resilience, back-up and serving remote areas, as well as data centres in Argentina, Colombia and Brazil.

The combination of Comsat’s geographic footprint and support facilities with BT’s portfolio of advanced telecommunications packages provides immediate and long-term solutions to address the IT-networked service needs of more than 2,000 customers in different sectors, ranging from finance, manufacturing, oil, retailing, media and pharmaceuticals to government and healthcare.

Among the new contracts won in Latin America over the last 12 months are a 33-million- dollar contract with the Colombian government to promote digital inclusion in the remote areas of the country; a second contract for a digital-inclusion project in Panama, and a contract in Brazil with Caixa Econômica Federal. In addition, BT’s presence in Latin America continues to support the regional elements of large global contracts recently announced such as Proctor & Gamble.

BT is currently fully capable of offering a wide range of services in Latin America, including the complete outsourcing of IT and telecommunications services. Recent Cisco certifications and designations that BT achieved also represent a further advance in the supply of services to support its clients’ competitiveness in the Digital Networked Economy. BT has earned the status of Cisco Certified TelePresence Connection Provider, becoming the first network service provider in Latin America to receive this designation. Additionally, a number of its global-managed services have qualified for Cisco Powered status, the highest designation within the Cisco Managed Services Channel Program. And BT’s subsidiaries have already earned Cisco Gold Certification in Brazil, Cisco Silver Certification in Argentina and Mexico, while Costa Rica, Honduras, El Salvador and Colombia are all set for the second stage of the Cisco certification initiative.

As for Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives, BT has announced in April that it will provide £500,000 to support and train 10,000 students in 5 Brazilian cities (Belo Horizonte, Fortaleza, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador and São Paulo) to enable them to use a range of communication tools to influence decisions and improve the quality of their schools and communities through its global development partnership with UNICEF. This partnership
entails a three-year agreement to invest a total of £1.5 million in bringing education, technology and communications skills to children from underprivileged socio-economic backgrounds in South Africa, Brazil and China.

During this year BT’s main objectives are to continue to achieve growth in profitability, and to continue the expansion of BT services in the region, including its global MPLS offer. The company will also continue bringing industry-leading know-how into the region and focus on convergence, collaboration, unified communications, mobility and managed security services.