94 Connecting people is at the core of what BT Group does. The company delivers broadband, mobile, TV, cybersecurity and networking services to more than 30 million customers in the UK and internationally, helping individuals and organisations communicate and collaborate. Internally, BT Group is applying the same philosophy to its own workplace transformation. Through its Better Workplace Programme, the organisation is modernising offices and meeting spaces, using Huddly’s technology to create a seamless experience across its global meeting rooms. Danny Ward, audiovisual architect at BT Group, is responsible for managing meeting room technology across the company’s global estate. Since 2020, he and his team have helped reshape the organisation’s workplace footprint as part of the initiative. “Supporting hybrid work is our top priority,” he says. “Whether people are working from home, a cafe or one of our offices, the ability to join a meeting easily no matter where they are is essential in today’s way of working.” The Better Workplace Programme has dramatically reshaped BT Group’s physical estate to support this vision. The company has reduced its property portfolio from hundreds of buildings to a smaller network of modern hubs and contact centres. “BT Group has limited its building portfolio to 17 main sites from Dundee in Scotland to Plymouth on the south coast of England,” says Ward. However, bringing thousands of employees together in fewer, larger sites raised an important question: how should meeting spaces be designed to enable seamless collaboration between in-person and remote participants? “One of the main challenges is moving so many people into a central location, taking older, smaller rooms and creating new ways for people to collaborate,” says Ward. Historically, many of BT Group’s meeting rooms relied on legacy video equipment that struggled to deliver a high-quality experience. “We used low-resolution cameras where it was often hard to see the person on the other end of the call,” says Ward. “Light would affect the visual experience, quality, bandwidth and all kinds of other factors.” To help meet this challenge, BT Group began to roll out Huddly’s modular camera systems. Unlike traditional video equipment, Huddly’s devices run AI directly on the camera, automating the meeting experience and making them straightforward to deploy and scale across a large estate. BT Group was among the first organisations to test the Huddly C1 AI-driven videobar and, after introducing it at the Manchester hub site, the device quickly proved its value. Today, BT Group has deployed the C1 in over 30 small and medium-sized rooms, expanding to a C1 Crew multi-camera setup where the space demands it. “In larger spaces where the C1 needs support to fully capture a room, we have the flexibility of retaining it as the heart of the camera Multinational telecommunications company BT Group transforms its meeting spaces with scalable solutions from Huddly CASE STUDY: BT GROUP Connecting people across spaces “ Remote participants are part of the conversation”
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