Hanif Lalani is a self-styled optimist. He is confident the Internet bubble is going to return and he is certain the global telecommunications sector, once it has sorted out its debt issues, can be a great stock once again.
He is not one to indulge in the doom and gloom mantra that has besieged the industry in recent months. In fact, if anything the chief executive of BT Northern Ireland believes he has good reason to be positively cheerful.
Aside from the fact that its parent company is struggling to reduce a debt mountain of £20 billion sterling (#32.85 billion) and that an asset sale programme is under way, BT Northern Ireland, is according to Mr Lalani, in very good health.
"We've had one of our best years on record in the North, our business is very good here and we have a track record of success. The difficulty is communicating the fact that, as a region, we are doing very well while the wider group still has some obvious issues," he said. BT has had a presence in the North since 1912 and, despite the arrival of new competitors, it remains the largest telecommunications operator. There are more than 128 registered competitors to BT in Northern Ireland but only a handful have their own network. BT invests more than £36 million a year on infrastructure in the North, which Mr Lalani believes underlines the company's commitment to the market.
But Mr Lalani, who has been chief executive since 1999, admits the North is becoming a more difficult place for investors to get a return on their money. "It is a very competitive market place and the facts are that the economy is not growing that fast and that Northern Ireland is heavily reliant on the public sector, which is contracting. The corporate sector is very static."
In Britain, the corporate sector is three times bigger than the government sector; in Northern Ireland the ratios are reversed. "The challenge for us in a market that is not really growing is how do we maintain our bottom-line profit and how do we make technology part of everybody's business? It is difficult," he said.
A renowned Leeds United fan, when he was appointed to the Northern Ireland job he was one of BT's youngest chief executives and arrived in the post after a number of high-flying roles in Britain. He believes "BT's vast coverage, scope and size" will help it in its battle to retain market share. In the meantime, as the telecoms war is waged on the ground, the fate of BT Northern Ireland is likely to be decided far away from its market.
A massive restructuring programme is underway in BT and Mr Lalani has no indication yet whether this will impact on the group's operations in the North.
He is a strong believer in the "if it is not broken, why fix it?" line of argument. It is understood BT Northern Ireland will be immediately affected by the strategic review. It is understood the company is close to signing a deal to sell one of its call centres in Belfast, which had been identified in the review as a "non-core" business. Mr Lalani sees opportunities for BT Northern Ireland in the restructuring process and one of those is the possibility of introducing new tariffs on an island-wide basis.
"Our strength is the fact that we can be locally responsive and we understand the local marketplace. Trade is increasing between Northern Ireland and the Republic and we have good relationships with Esat in the Republic, so we are talking to it about how the BT family can best deliver for its customers," Mr Lalani added.
He says the most significant development in the telecommunications industry in the last two years has been the growth of people using the Internet. "When I came to Northern Ireland, I would have said around 6 per cent of homes had access to the Internet. It now stands at around 35 per cent of homes and businesses. Our latest statistics show that around 225,000 people regularly access the Internet."
Mr Lalani does not believe the Internet is part of every business's strategy in Northern Ireland yet. "If you take the companies driven by the Small Business Agency, LEDU, then yes they are very Internet aware. If you take the multinationals, yes they are, as are government departments. But, if you say to me `What about firms with one to five employees?', then I would have to say: `No, the Internet is not yet part of their strategy.'
"We need to grasp the exploitation of Internet technologies in Northern Ireland because I think we are just at the beginning of the Internet revolution," he said.
He believes one of the immediate issues that Northern Ireland telecom players must address is bandwidth. "Everybody realises that you need bandwidth to be successful in the future, either to attract inward investment or for other companies to get competitive advantages in Northern Ireland. The issue for all of us is how do you get a financial return?
"If you look at the demographics of business in Northern Ireland, the concentration of businesses in the Greater Belfast area will give you enough volume to make money over an acceptable period. But once you move outside of Belfast, there is not the concentration of businesses to get a return.
"The question is how do you get public and private sector to work together to share the cost of investment? The private sector alone cannot get a return on it," Mr Lalani said.
