Summary

• BT Group and Verizon will create a 50:50 joint venture combining their international enterprise connectivity businesses.
• The new company is expected to serve more than 3,000 customers in over 180 countries and represent around $4 billion in combined annual revenue.
• The transaction reflects consolidation in global managed network services as cloud, AI, compliance, and resilience reshape enterprise connectivity.

BT Group and Verizon have agreed to combine their international enterprise operations in a 50:50 joint venture, creating a new connectivity business focused on multinational customers.

The joint venture is expected to serve more than 3,000 customers across more than 180 countries, representing about $4 billion in combined annual revenue. Verizon will make a $625 million equalisation payment to BT, and both companies will hold equal voting rights. Martijn Blanken, a telecoms executive with senior experience at Telstra, EXA Infrastructure, and KPN, has been named chief executive officer-designate, subject to completion.

The new business will bring together BT International and Verizon’s international enterprise wireline arm. Its market is secure and resilient connectivity for cloud-first organisations operating across borders, where compliance, sovereignty, data movement, and operational resilience are becoming part of the network buying decision.

The deal also gives both companies a strategic tidy-up. BT has been narrowing its focus towards the UK market, while Verizon has its own domestic priorities. Placing international enterprise operations into a joint vehicle allows both groups to retain exposure to multinational demand without carrying the full complexity of broad global networks alone.

Enterprise networking becomes infrastructure strategy

International enterprise connectivity used to be discussed mainly as a telecoms services market. It now sits inside a wider infrastructure picture. Multinational organisations need secure links between cloud regions, offices, datacentres, factories, contact centres, SaaS platforms, and operational technology environments. They also need resilience against outages, cyberattacks, geopolitical disruption, and regulatory complexity.

AI adoption adds more pressure. Data has to move between systems, inference workloads may run across multiple environments, and organisations are under pressure to keep sensitive information within defined governance boundaries. A network provider that can combine global reach with compliance-aware service design can become more important to enterprise architecture than its legacy telecoms label suggests.

The joint venture points to consolidation in a fragmented market. Global managed connectivity has long required scale, but margins have been squeezed by competition, legacy network costs, and customer shifts towards cloud native connectivity models. Hyperscalers, software-defined networking providers, satellite operators, and specialist security vendors have all encroached on parts of the traditional telecoms value chain.

BT and Verizon are responding by pooling assets rather than trying to preserve parallel international networks. The commercial logic is straightforward: reduce duplication, improve scale, and offer a more credible platform for multinational customers. The execution will be less simple. Integrating service portfolios, operating models, network assets, customer contracts, and support functions can be difficult, especially where large enterprise customers expect continuity.

The domestic UK angle is also clear. BT’s focus on its home market reflects the heavy capital demands of fibre, mobile, and network modernisation. International enterprise connectivity may still matter, but BT’s strategic centre of gravity is increasingly UK infrastructure and cash discipline.

The venture will need regulatory clearances and is expected to complete in 2027. If it proceeds, the new business will arrive in a market where connectivity is no longer background plumbing. Cloud, AI, cyber resilience, and compliance have made networks part of the operating architecture of modern organisations, and BT and Verizon are betting that scale still matters.