BT Logs On with £18m UK Airport Internet Kiosk Deal

February 25, 2004

BT Logs On with £18m Airport Internet Kiosk Deal 
ic Wales, UK 

  
TELECOMS group BT has won an £18m deal to fit up to
180 of its new internet kiosks at Heathrow, Gatwick
and Stansted airports.

BT is to replace about one-third of the existing
payphones at the airports with the web-enabled
payphones.

It will also continue to manage the airports'
remaining 350 basic payphones as part of the five-year
deal with airport operator BAA.

BT said the contract is the largest of its kind won by
its payphones division.

The group has been replacing standard payphones around
the UK with the new internet kiosks. These allow
people to surf the internet and to send e-mails and
text messages, as well as to make calls.

It currently has about 1,500 of the kiosks and expects
to have 20,000 within the next five years.

The company plans to cut the number of basic payphones
around the UK by about 30,000 to about 100,000 in the
next two years.

A BT spokesman said the company will still have about
23,000 more payphones at the end of that programme
than it had when the company was privatised in 1984.

"There is still very much a future for payphones," he
said.

Paul Hendron, director of BT Payphones, called the
deal with BAA, which runs seven UK airports, "a
pivotal win."

He added, "These airports are prime sites with a total
of more than 112 million passengers passing through
them each year. It demonstrates the massive potential
for BT Internet kiosks."
 
  

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