BT Group unveiled plans to make EE its flagship brand for the consumer market going forward, a move designed to simplify its offering and stretch the mobile operator into new areas of convergence.

Marc Allera, BT Consumer CEO, stated the group was making a change in the way it takes its brands to market, “evolving from today’s approach in the consumer market where BT and EE both take centre stage”.

“Having both BT and EE in an already crowded consumer market means we must have two of everything, and that makes life harder for our customers and our people: two accounts, two apps, two product roadmaps and multiple systems…we need to simplify things, for everyone”, he said.

From today (27 April), Allera explained the company is starting preparations to evolve the EE brand to stretch into new areas and focus on the convergence of networks, devices and new services beyond connectivity.

Details of its plans will be released later this year.

Allera said the company chose EE because it was synonymous with the best mobile connectivity and its popularity in the broadband market had grown steadily, as it drove awareness to EE fibre, powered by BT.

The BT brand, meanwhile will be focused more on consumer customers using standalone broadband and landline services, while BT Sport is also unaffected.

BT will also remain the brand for its Enterprise and Global units.

No surprise
Kester Mann, director of consumer and connectivity at CCS Insight, stated the move was no surprise following a recent increase in broadband, an area traditionally synonymous with BT.

“Running two major consumer brands was never something BT could continue indefinitely. It means additional cost and complexity both internally and for customers, not something that aligns with strategic efforts to streamline the company, improve simplicity and achieve challenging cost-saving targets,” he said.

Mann also believes the announcement represents failure in the BT brand to “resonate with UK’s increasingly technology-savvy consumers”.