Leader: BT's big wins

Just when we think the pipeline of big wins for BT must be thinning out, another one comes along.

The UK telco not too long ago warned that we should expect the headlines to become less frequent. After all, a mega-contract with the NHS doesn't come along every quarter. But this week we have further evidence that the company's mix of networks plus IT services is proving a winner.

There was the tiddler of a deal with the MoD, worth a mere £6m or so - definitely not in the same league as the big one over in Whitehall last week that BT didn't get its teeth into. Then there's today's BT Expedite £38m contract with WHSmith and, most notably, yesterday's $3bn deal with Reuters, described by BT CEO Ben Verwaayen as a "blockbuster". (Though why two UK companies don't want to report the deal in pounds is beyond this writer.)

Reuters may just have the most extensive network of operations in the world - 40,000-plus locations to keep connected, by at least one reckoning. For BT to be the chosen one is quite an endorsement.

The deal also sees BT acquire the Radianz global networking business, a route into the financial services vertical, in particular Reuters' competitors that the information provider found it hard to sell to itself.

Also note that the company's decision not to put out a statement with the usual CIO-plus-head-of-telco-division comments. We saw mutual admiration from the companies' CEOs. The message was clear - this means a lot to both sides.

Two things. First of all, hats off. In the week when many are remembering the height of the dot-com bubble five years ago, who would have thought that BT could have recovered so far from its own nadir that followed?

Rather than one single big idea, it has focused on several. More aggressive and respectable broadband rollout is one but arguably the most important has been to add an IT services string to its bow.

But second, there are those who say be careful with the BT contract wins. They aren't quite the same as an Accenture, IBM GS or EDS taking over IT operations. That's true - and that's a good point for some league tables of deals we see. But doesn't this just show how those services big boys don't have a global network component under their own roof?

And there are others who refuse to paint too rosy a picture for further reasons. BT doesn't have the breadth of many other former state telcos, they argue. Most notably, it has no mobile arm it can call its own these days. Sure, a strong partnership with Vodafone helps but we can only think mobility will become more important and any amount of MVNO activity or Wi-Fi rollouts aren't the same.

But every time we think there's a limit to BT's new direction, another big deal seems to come along. As the traditional, voice-centric market declines (in revenues, if not usage) BT has to see it's that way, that it isn't the company we all knew from even five years ago.