John Dovey

John, President UK Corporates BT Global Services, is currently responsible for the UK corporates market unit within global services. The organization consists of over 700 customers generating over £2BN revenue per annum. In addition John is also responsible for two self contained business units: media and broadcast, which provides global networking and digital content distribution solutions to the media industry; iNet, a data integrator business formed from two recent acquisitions. iNet provides Cisco technology solutions to the UK SME account base and target corporate vertical market segments such as education in the government sector. The two business units have a combined turnover of over £250m and generate over £40M EBITDA. 

John has been a key executive in driving BT’s business transformation into a leading global networked IT provider over the last 8 years. He has held responsibility for driving sales into our commercial customers as well as then being responsible for our design and deployment consultants globally

John has been with BT for 15 years, joining from Gec Plessey Telecommunications (GPT) where he worked in software development and consultancy on a variety of major defence projects after graduating with a BSc in Physics from the University of Manchester in 1984.

John started his BT career in system engineering before moving into a variety of specialist sales roles working across clients in a number of vertical markets including government, retail, travel and business services. After a number of promotions John was appointed General Manager for specialist sales and ICT solutions for the Commercial and Brands Directorate in September 2000. The team consisted of nearly 200 pre sales specialists and system engineers supporting over 300 clients helping them to adopt IP and IT services from within BT’s ICT portfolio. The directorate grew it’s ICT revenues to an annual turnover of over £800M by 2005.

John is married to Jeanette and they have two children , Bethan (16) and Ben (14). John is a keen football fan and season ticket holder at Birmingham City.

 Related Sessions

Saturday 1 November 2008, 10.00am Upper Gulbenkian Gallery
Battle of Ideas 2008 welcome address


Saturday 1 November 2008, 3.30pm Lecture Theatre 1
Emerging Economies – Question Time



 Festival Buzz

"I was amazed by the high quality of the Battle of Ideas 2007 and the intellectual excitement that it provoked."
Prof Malcolm Grant CBE, president and provost, University College London