British Telecom (BT) has bagged a seven year contract from the chemical group BASF for managing its networked IT services internationally.

The 200 million euros contract will include BT interconnecting about 900 BASF sites in more than 80 countries around the world. Under the scope of the contract, BT will also provide IP telephony and local network services (Managed LAN Services) at 300 sites in North and South America and Asia for the company.

Newzbin2, which offers a collection of pirated content to its members, has said that it will soon release software to bypass a blockade imposed by the British Telecom on the site after an order from the high-court in the UK.

Newzbin2 emerged after its predecessor Newzbin was shut down following an earlier court order. The High Court had ordered BT to block access to Newzbin2 in July after the Motion Picture Association, which is a joint initiative by leading Hollywood studios, won legal proceedings against the site.

British Telecom (BT) has announced the names of an the next 144 telephone exchanges that are to be connected to the super fast fibre by autumn 2012.

BT has already announced that it will connect extra one million homes and businesses in the UK to its upcoming fibre network. BT is currently rolling out its new fibre network with an investment of £2.5 billion. The network is expected to connect two-thirds of UK homes and businesses by the end of 2015.

UK's telecom giant, TalkTalk has said that the British Telecom is building a broadband monopoly using public finances.

The company also accused BT of planning to establish a control over fibre network in the country, something, it claims, would leave the UK with weakening infrastructure when compared to other European nations.

Telecom player, British Telecom is planning to offer fast Wi-Fi connection in about 100 bars and pubs in London allowing visitors to enjoy fast connectivity with a cool drink.

BT has entered into a partnership with Heineken to offer wireless internet to another 200 pubs across the UK by the end of next year. With the move, the total number of BT's hotspots will rise to over three million. The Heineken Hub will also provide access to exclusive content from the Independent and new newspaper I.

OnLive has entered into an agreement with telecom major, BT to launch its cloud-based gaming service in the UK market.

The gaming service, which is scheduled to be launched on September 22 this year, offers instant access to more than 100 games via iPad, PC or internet TV and Android-powered devices. The service has been available in the US for sometime and allows users to enjoy gaming without the need of consoles.

UK’s communications regulator, Ofcom has said that it will reduce the prices that BT Wholesale can charge other Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in less populated areas.

The move could benefit millions of rural homes and businesses as they might receive cheaper broadband services from ISPs using BT Wholesale’s network infrastructure. The regulator has ruled that BT must reduce its charge to ISPs each year, by a rate of at least 12 percentage points below inflation.

UK Culture Minister Ed Vaizey has described the telecom operator’s opposition to the published anti-privacy laws as "quite odd".

Inter service providers, TalkTalk and BT lost a judicial review of the already published Digital Economy Act. The companies say that the process requiring sending of warning letters to accused infringers and cutting off the connection of persistent offenders may be illegal and should not be funded by public sector companies.

A British company, New Call Telecom, which offers home telephone services, broadband and low-cost international calls, has taken back its outsourced work from India after it found that outsourcing it to India is no longer cheaper than doing the same work in the UK. Many British companies outsource their work to India because it costs very low.

New Call Telecom competes with BT and Sky to offer these tele-services to the customers. After taking back its work from India, the company has opened a call centre in Lancashire.

The landline telephone services providers will be offering a price cut in case of the major connections, following the pressure mounted by the telecommunications regulator, Ofcom.

It is stated that the prices will drop from £33 to just £2 in cases. It follows from the price cut that is termed as the "early termination" which is charged by up to 85 percent.

According to an Ofcom statement, "We very much welcome the reductions made by BT, TalkTalk and Virgin Media, which means that consumers will face much lower charges if they wish to end their contracts early."

New regulations come in straight from the EU who plans to hand over the control back to BT.

Thus making it more powerful and at the same time controlling competitors to access the new fibre optic broadband network.

As of now a copper networking system known as Local Loop Unbundling (LLU) aids in the accessibility of other such broadband providers with a wide network span in exchange of installation of their own equipment thus facilitating to offer a cheaper broadband.

BT has asked a 71-year-old woman, Beverly McCartney for £150,000 as an installation charge for a broadband connection at her residence.

BT which aims at bringing faster Internet connections under the Regional Innovative Broadband Support Scheme (RIBS) has denied to avails this service to people who are located in rural locations, reports BBC.

The company contacted on behalf of RIBS, and asked for £142,000 of its £150,000 as an installation cost for the supply of broadband connection.

BT will soon be bestowing a SMS Hub service for other network providers.

This deal has been mutually agreed between the UK based Tyntec and BT Global services that basically harmonizes the already existing services proffered by the operator, such as signaling and voice traffic services for other network providers round the globe.

Also, the industry experts claim that the short messaging service will be extant for at least ten years and therefore is worth investing in.

BT has chalked out plan that continues to talk of the fibre optic broadband connectivity.

It is believed that BT actually will put things in motion as soon as the company releases its end of year results. The current proposal states that it will help connect around forty per cent population, or ten million, households and small businesses to superfast broadband by the middle of 2012, at an estimated cost of around £1.5 million.

After AT&T sold its entire 7% stake in the IT arm of the M&M Group, Tech Mahindra, it is now the turn of the technology giant British telecom to look at options of diluting around the same level of 7% stake in Tech Mahindra. Sources in the industry confirm that the company is into exploratory talks to dilute close to 7% stake in Tech Mahindra.

The mutual contract that saw Alcatel-Lucent enters in a five-year agreement with BT for an evolution of BT's superfast 21st Century Network (21CN).

This deal which works in close union with both the parties seeks to utilise Alcatel-Lucent's High Leverage NetworkTM (HLN) architecture and transformational services. This in turn boosts BT's infrastructure helping it set up the new video-rich services to its wholesale and retail subscribers.

BT, one of the major Internet service providers of UK, has pronounced that it will soon release the super fast fiber-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) broadband Internet service. This will go to 300 new exchanges mainly in the South West by the end of year.

As the official statement from the ISP comes out marking the release of FTTC, it said that it would encircle 4 million BT lines. These will become operational from autumn and will last till spring 2011.

The boss of Britain's biggest ISP BT, Mandybill Ian Livingston has urged a penalty for file-sharing across the country. He has demanded to bring some law so that the Government can collect fines from the file sharers.

However, the government has proposed a technical sanction against the file-sharing customers. Livingston has revealed that a penalty for the accused would be a better option rather than going for a temporary suspension. He has also informed that sometimes the accused can't receive a fair justice from the institution.

Telecom giant BT received the backing of fund trustees for a plan that will see the company make regular payments to the scheme for 17 years. BT said it was a prudent funding plan, but also revealed that the Pensions Regulator had substantial concerns over some areas of the agreement, which is still under review by the pension regulator.

The company is trying to find ways to cover the huge £9 billion deficit in its pension scheme. The 360,000 member's pension scheme is struggling to infuse more funds to cover the deficit as it designs a recovery plan.

The most popular UK broadband service BT is happy to announce that it has managed to hit the five million customers mark. It also announced that the present achievement is attained in just two years time and the firm is expecting to reach six million as early as possible. To celebrate the success, Elizabeth Patterson, the fifth millionth user, was awarded a trip to Winter Olympics by BT.