BT Group history

The British Telecom brand was introduced in 1980.

On 1 October 1981, this became the official name of Post Office Telecommunications, which became a state-owned corporation independent of the Post Office under the provisions of the British Telecommunications Act 1981.

On 19 July 1982, the Government announced its intention to sell shares in British Telecom to the public.

On 1 April 1984, British Telecommunications was incorporated as a public limited company (plc) in anticipation of the passing of the Telecommunications Bill.

The company changed its trading name to "BT" on 2 April 1991.

In 1996 Peter Bonfield was appointed CEO and Chairman of the Executive Committee, promising a "rollercoaster ride".

In July 1997, the new Labour Government relinquished its Special Share ("Golden Share"), retained at the time of the flotation, which had effectively given it the power to block a takeover of the company, and to appoint two non-executive directors to the Board.

BT acquired 100% of this venture in 1999.

In late 2000 the BT and AT&T boards fell-out – partly due to each partner's excess debt, and the resulting board room clear-outs – partly due to Concert's extensive annual losses.

Bonfield's salary to 31 March 2001 was a basic of £780,000 (increasing to £820,000) plus a £481,000 bonus and £50,000 of other benefits including pension.

In 2004, BT was awarded the contract to deliver and manage N3, a secure and fast broadband network for the NHS National Programme for IT (NPfIT) program, on behalf of the English National Health Service (NHS).

mmO2 plc was replaced by O2 plc in a further share-swap in 2005, and subsequently bought in an agreed takeover by Telefónica for £18 billion and delisted.

The BT Home Hub manufactured by Inventel was also launched in June 2006.

In January 2007, BT acquired Sheffield-based ISP, PlusNet plc, adding 200,000 customers.

On 14 May 2009, BT said it was cutting up to 15,000 jobs in the coming year after it announced its results for the year to 31 March 2009.

On 6 April 2011, BT launched the first online not-for-profit fundraising service for UK charities called BT MyDonate as part of its investment to the community.

On 1 August 2013, BT launched its first television channels, BT Sport, to compete with rival broadcaster Sky Sports.

In 2014, with less than 0.7% of the company's fibre network being FTTP, BT dropped the 25% target, saying that it was "far less relevant today" because of improvements made to the headline speed of FTTC, which had doubled to 80Mbit/s since its fibre broadband rollout was first announced.

In January 2015, BT stopped taking orders for the on-demand product.

On 15 January 2016, BT received final unconditional approval by the Competition and Markets Authority to acquire EE. The deal was officially completed on 29 January 2016 with Deutsche Telekom now owning 12% of BT, while Orange S.A. own 4%.

On 8 June 2017, BT appointed KPMG as its new auditor to replace PwC in the wake of the fraud scandal in Italy that triggered a major profit warning earlier that year.

It will also include BT's Ventures business which "acts as an incubator for potential new growth areas of the company" and will report as a single unit from 1 October 2018.