BT pours millions into wooing new firms

BT is pouring hundreds of millions of pounds into winning business from the army of start-ups that have launched during the pandemic.

The telecoms giant will offer marketing services to lure the smallest new firms to sign up to its phone and internet packages. BT has identified a £1.5 billion market in offering t elecoms for micro- businesses after 800,000 new companies were set up in Britain in the past year. It expects to spend a ‘large chunk’ of the £ 500 million set aside for its business-tobusiness enterprise arm on a new division called SoHo, which will target the smallest ‘single office, home office’ businesses.

Chris Sims, managing director of the SoHo unit, revealed that it will offer a service t hat all ows small firms to advertise easily on websites and social media, with BT acting as the middleman.

He said t he service would launch ‘ within a matter of weeks’.