BT Wholesale and Ventures was a division of

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

telecommunications company

BT Group BT Group plc (formerly British Telecom) is a British Multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered in London, England. It has operations in around 180 countries and is the largest provider of fixed-li ...

that provided voice, broadband, data, hosted communication, managed network and IT services to communications providers (CPs) in

Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the north-west coast of continental Europe, consisting of the countries England, Scotland, and Wales. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the List of European ...

. It was merged with BT's Business and Public Sector division to form BT Enterprise in October 2018. Wholesale and Ventures provided services to BT's other divisions:

BT Consumer BT Group plc (formerly British Telecom) is a British Multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered in London, England. It has operations in around 180 countries and is the largest provider of fixed-li ...

, BT Business and Public Sector and EE. It also offered services to media companies and broadcasters, and its ventures side offered a range of products and services. It provided the voice services to UK customers via

999 999 or triple nine most often refers to: * 999 (emergency telephone number), a telephone number for the emergency services in several countries * 999 (number), an integer * AD 999, a year * 999 BC, a year Media Books * 999 (anthology), ''99 ...

, 118 500 and Next Generation Text Service, which helps those who can’t hear or speak on the phone. In April 2018, Gavin Patterson, then BT Group's CEO, announced Wholesale and Ventures was to be combined with the group's Business and Public Sector division into a newly-formed division, BT Enterprise. It came after BT's decision to undertake a streamlining of its operations, in a bid to strengthen its offerings as a business. Prior to its merger with Business and Public Sector, Wholesale and Ventures was formerly known as BT Wholesale, taking on the name following BT's new organisational structure that took effect in April 2016 after its acquisition of EE, and comprises the existing BT Wholesale division along with EE's

mobile virtual network operator A mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) is a wireless communications services provider that does not own the wireless network infrastructure over which it provides services to its customers. An MVNO enters into a business agreement with a mobil ...

business as well as some specialist businesses such as Fleet, Payphones and Directories. Its ventures side included the following businesses at time of its restructuring: * BT Redcare – protects homes and businesses in the UK against intruders, accidental fire or arson * BT Cables – supports and supplies a range of cables and accessories * Directory Solutions - the sole distributor of the UK’s directory information to producers of directory products and services * BT’s Phone Book – the only UK directory that includes business and residential listings * Payphones (

Red telephone box The red telephone box is a telephone kiosk for a public telephone designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, the architect responsible for Liverpool Cathedral. The telephone box is a familiar sight on the streets of the United Kingdom, its associa ...

, KX series, LinkUK) – handles

telephone call A telephone call, phone call, voice call, or simply a call, is the effective use of a connection over a telephone network between the calling party and the called party. Telephone calls are the form of human communication that was first enabl ...

s and provides additional services such as

advertising Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a Product (business), product or Service (economics), service. Advertising aims to present a product or service in terms of utility, advantages, and qualities of int ...

cash machines An automated teller machine (ATM) is an electronic telecommunications device that enables customers of financial institutions to perform financial transactions, such as cash withdrawals, deposits, funds transfers, balance inquiries or account ...

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for Wireless LAN, local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by ...

and small cell mobile hotspots * BT Supply Chain – provides

supply chain management In commerce, supply chain management (SCM) deals with a system of procurement (purchasing raw materials/components), operations management, logistics and marketing channels, through which raw materials can be developed into finished produc ...

for both Group businesses and its external customer base

Products

Wholesale Broadband Connect

Wholesale Broadband Connect (WBC) is BT Wholesale's up-to-24 Mbit/s

ADSL2+ G.992.5 (also referred to as ADSL2+, G.dmt.bis+, and G.adslplus) is an ITU-T standard for asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) broadband Internet access. The standard has a maximum theoretical downstream sync speed of 24 megabits per secon ...

offering in the UK. WBC replaced the ADSL Max product. It also refers to BT's native fibre-to-the-premises service.

IPstream

IPstream is the most highly used

wholesale Wholesaling or distributing is the sale of goods or merchandise to retailers; to industrial, commercial, institutional or other professional business users; or to other wholesalers (wholesale businesses) and related subordinated services. In ...

broadband Internet In telecommunications, broadband or high speed is the wide- bandwidth data transmission that exploits signals at a wide spread of frequencies or several different simultaneous frequencies, and is used in fast Internet access. The transmission m ...

service in the UK. BT Wholesale sells the service to

ISP An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides a myriad of services related to accessing, using, managing, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non ...

s and

IPTV Internet Protocol television (IPTV), also called TV over broadband, is the service delivery of television over Internet Protocol (IP) networks. Usually sold and run by a Telephone company, telecom provider, it consists of broadcast live telev ...

providers, who use it to provide

ADSL Asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) is a type of digital subscriber line (DSL) technology, a data communications technology that enables faster data transmission over Copper wire, copper telephone lines than a conventional voiceband modem ...

services to customers over

Openreach Openreach Limited is a company wholly owned by BT Group plc, that maintain telephone cables, ducts, cabinets and exchanges that connect nearly all homes and businesses in the United Kingdom to various national broadband and telephone networks. T ...

telephone lines. The IPstream product covers the transport of data between the end-user's premises and an interconnect point of the ISPs choice, such as their main colocation facility, which is served by one or more links called BT Centrals. BT has operational control of the network for tasks such as load balancing. Transit of data to and from the internet, along with other services such as email servers, are the responsibility of the ISP. IPStream is widely used by ISPs because it is cheaper to set up and costs less in maintenance than the ISP building its own network. This is balanced by the fact that usage costs for ISPs are higher using IPstream than their own network. Datastream is the similar system where ISPs in the UK use BT equipment but use their own IP transport. BT Wholesale pays Openreach for access to the

local loop In telephony, the local loop (also referred to as the local tail, subscriber line, or in the aggregate as the last mile) is the physical link or circuit that connects from the demarcation point of the customer premises to the edge of the co ...

and the exchange. The alternative to IPStream is

local-loop unbundling Local loop unbundling (LLU or LLUB) is the regulatory process of allowing multiple telecommunications operators to use connections from a telephone exchange to the customer's location. The physical wire connection between the local exchange and th ...

, in which the ISP obtains these facilities from Openreach directly, and makes its own arrangements for onward carriage of the data stream. Similar services are offered in other countries where there is a single dominant telecommunications provider, such as wholesale DSL from

Telstra Telstra Group Limited is an Australian telecommunications company that builds and operates telecommunications networks and markets related products and services. It is a member of the S&P/ASX 20 stock index, and is Australia's largest telecomm ...

in Australia. IPstream has largely been retired by BT in favour of its Wholesale Broadband Connect.

References

{{Telecommunications industry in the United Kingdom BT Group Digital subscriber line Telecommunications companies of the United Kingdom Telecommunications companies established in 2006 Wholesalers of the United Kingdom