BT is one of Europe's leading providers of telecommunications services. Its principal activities include local, national and international telecommunications services, higher-value broadband and internet products and services, and IT solutions. In the UK, BT serves over 21 million corporate and residential customers with more than 28 million exchange lines, as well as providing network services to other licensed operators.

BT's Group strategy is to create value for shareholders through being the best provider of communications services and solutions for everybody in the UK, and for corporate customers in Europe, achieving global reach through partnership.
BT consists principally of four lines of business: BT Retail, BT Wholesale, BT Global Services and BT Openreach. They focus on seven strategic priorities:

• to deliver the highest levels of customer satisfaction performance and reduce the number of dissatisfied customers each year
• to achieve organic profitable revenue growth, while constraining capital expenditure
• to put broadband at the heart of BT, expand the market for broadband services and create a media-enabled network
• to provide solutions and other value-added services for multi-site corporate customers in Europe
• to place all UK networks under a single management structure and to limit investment in legacy voice and data platforms, while migrating operations to new platforms
• to use the strength of the BT brand to move into broadband services for consumers and also into related markets, such as communications solutions and business mobility services for major business customers and information and communications technology for SMEs
• all delivered by diverse, skilled and motivated people