BT Wholesale announces partnership to provide wholesale distribution of SmartNumbers to major European telcos

London, England. February 2004

BT Wholesale today announced the launch of SmartNumbers, a business-class white label offering which allows telecommunications companies and service providers to supply its business customers with 'virtual phone numbers' - telephone numbers, voicemail and Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) services not linked to any physical location.

The launch builds on BT Wholesale's relationship with SmartNumbers, the UK provider of business communications solutions for team-based, flexible working. SmartNumbers allows telecommunications companies and service providers to enter the flexible working communications market and start enjoying recurring revenues immediately, without the risk, capital or operating costs involved in developing and deploying their own platform. SmartNumbers can increase ARPU by 100 percent.

The benefits to the end user are clearly apparent: The average cost per year for a company to maintain a permanent workstation in London is £13,2491. SmartNumbers provides end users with an alternative by enabling true mobile working without leading to bad service, loss of team-working/company cultures, or escalating communications costs.

For instance, £400 per annum can be saved per mobile worker as a result of avoiding the need to transfer calls from the office to a mobile phone, a frequent requirement of the mobile worker. There is also the opportunity for additional savings of up to £600 per annum because SmartNumbers avoids the roaming charges incurred by mobile workers diverting calls to landlines.

The solution enables end-users to divert calls to any phone for free. It also enables users to handle all messages, voicemail, email or fax, via a single mailbox, providing true unified communications. The mailbox can be operated either via phone or a web-based front end that can be displayed on their PC, WAP or PDA.

The most attractive cost savings are to companies wishing to publish support lines that will connect callers to specialists or agents spread across different offices, or even working at home. SmartNumbers call centre services avoid expensive ACD equipment while providing cost savings not possible with traditional single site call centres.

SmartNumbers also acts as a disaster recovery solution, as the infrastructure is sited in a secure location should the Telco or end user be subject to a business continuity issue.

These advanced business communication services are traditionally the reserve of multinational enterprises. SmartNumbers enables the benefits to be extended to SME's as it requires no capital or operation expenditure.

The solution acts as a value-add to the services of Telco's, Broadband providers and ISPs, who can all enjoy improved revenues, expanded market opportunities, and closer ties with customers, thus reducing churn.

Stuart Horwood, Managing Director, BT Wholesale Markets, said: "Flexible working activities such as hot-desking, home working, multi-site working, or working on the move are becoming increasingly prevalent in the modern workplace. However, they can also traditionally increase companies' communications costs through factors like mobile messaging and roaming. That's why solutions like SmartNumbers will become increasingly important offerings in the comms market. We are delighted with the initial interest in the solution."

Geoffrey Paterson, CEO of SmartNumbers said, "We're very proud to be working with BT Wholesale to combine our talents in team-based mobile working and theirs in networking." The launch comes as part of a major new flexible working initiative from BT Wholesale.