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BT attracts record number of new customers

BT has seen customer numbers swell ahead of next season’s exclusive Champions League broadcasts.

Despite seeing its yearly revenues fall below expectations, BT is still drawing customers in. The telecoms giant announced that it had attracted a record number of new subscribers in the last quarter of the financial year, as folk prepare for next season’s Champions League broadcasts, which will be shown exclusively on BT Sport.

The carrier paid £897 million for the exclusive right to broadcast Europe’s elite club competition for the next three years. The deal will see all 350 matches in the Champions League shown, as well as matches from the Europa League competition, but subscribers will have to pay a “small subscription charge” if they want access to all the games. The final, however, will be broadcast free.

BT also confirmed that it had signed-up 455,000 new fibre broadband customers in the first three months of the year, marking a 31 per cent increase over last year’s tally, and the company’s tentative re-entry into the mobile arena has gone well too, with 50,000 new subscribers taking on deals in the six weeks since they launched.

The company’s proposed takeover of EE also appears to be moving ahead apace. The £12.5 billion deal is expected to be ratified by the end of the year, leaving BT as the biggest mobile network in the country – at least until Hutchison Whampoa’s takeover of O2 is given the green light.

Sky is expected to at least partially retaliate with the launch of its own mobile network in 2016.

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