BT Retail Deploys Motive Software to Manage
Next-Generation Services

PARIS, France, Oct. 10, 2006 -

Today at Broadband World Forum Europe, Motive, Inc., a leading provider of broadband management software, announced that BT Retail, one of the world’s leading providers of communications solutions, has deployed Motive’s Home Device Manager (HDM) solution to improve the service activation and assurance of its Business and Home Hub offerings. Motive HDM is integrated into current services, enabling BT Retail to remotely manage customer premises equipment (CPE) to instantly activate new services such as home networking, voice over IP (VoIP), small/medium business (SMB) networks and IP television (IPTV).

After a competitive analysis, BT Retail selected the HDM solution because of its automated proactive management, architecture, scalability, and advanced security features. Motive HDM’s intelligent automation will also be used to strengthen forthcoming BT Retail broadband services including BT Vision and BT Fusion.

“Providing good customer service remains our top priority as we roll out new services,” said Stratis Scleparis, chief technology officer for BT Retail. “Motive’s software effectively manages the technological nervous system that makes up a home or business network, while hiding this immense complexity from our customers. This greatly reduces the burden on our customer support operations, and provides our customers with a high-quality, trouble-free digital experience.”

BT Retail’s Business and Home Hubs allow users to create their own wireless network, and gives them a single access point for BT Retail’s range of current and future broadband services. Today, Motive’s technology is enabling BT Retail to self-activate through zero-touch provisioning thousands of Home Hubs per month, and will soon be available for the Business Hub service. Motive’s technology will also be used to recognise and resolve technical issues, fully optimise network performance, automatically activate new services, apply firmware upgrades and enhance customer service.

A longstanding Motive customer, BT Retail also uses Motive’s broadband management software to automatically install, configure and troubleshoot its high-speed internet services. Recognising the benefits of the technology, BT Retail looked to Motive for a solution to manage the whole of the home and SMB network and found the HDM solution to best match their requirements.

By deploying Motive HDM alongside other Motive broadband management solutions, BT Retail expects to significantly reduce the number of customer support calls necessary to support the service. Furthermore, calls that do come in to the help desk will be dealt with more quickly, because BT Retail’s customer support team will have vital visibility into the subscriber’s network and the capabilities to remotely solve technical issues. These remote management capabilities will also enable BT Retail to roll out next-generation services faster.

Including BT Retail, twelve service providers worldwide have selected Motive HDM to manage their next-generation broadband services. Since it became available in 2005, HDM has emerged the clear winner in the majority of competitive tenders for device management.

“As the competitive broadband market in Europe becomes increasingly saturated, next-generation services are the key for driving new revenue and growth, which is why Motive HDM has seen tremendous uptake,” said Bruno Teuber, vice president and general manager of EMEA and APAC at Motive. “Motive’s HDM allowed BT Retail to quickly bring a sophisticated new service to market, provide large-scale automated CPE firmware upgrades, and avoid problems that typically plague new service deployments. By building automated management into its Home and Business Hub offerings, BT Retail will be able to quickly and reliably deliver differentiated services.”