Contract Win

Eckoh Technologies PLC
14 February 2006


For Immediate Release                                           14 February 2006

 BT AND ECKOH PROVIDE DEFRA WITH SPEECH DRIVEN DATA CAPTURE SERVICE FOR POULTRY
                                    REGISTER
          
            Round-the-clock automated service provided to DEFRA helps
   thousands of poultry owners register their details by February 28 deadline

A round-the-clock, speech-driven data capture service provided by BT and Eckoh
Technologies is enabling poultry owners to register their details with the
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), helping to boost
Government and industry ability to effectively tackle an outbreak of avian flu.
All poultry owners who keep fifty birds or more on commercial premises are
legally required to register details of their poultry by February 28, 2006 on
the new Great Britain Poultry Register.

Thousands of poultry owners will need to register their details with DEFRA
before the deadline. To ensure all calls to the hotline - 0800 634 1112 - are
handled efficiently and to ease the pressure on daytime advisers, DEFRA are
supplementing their call centre staffing levels with the 24/7 automated data
capture solution provided by BT and Eckoh Technologies.

The speech-driven service captures the name, address and contact details of
poultry owners, fulfilling registration questionnaires and eliminating the need
for manual transcription and post-call follow up work.

DEFRA required a service provider that had the necessary hosting capacity and
was robust enough to manage and process thousands of calls simultaneously. BT
and Eckoh's highly scaleable call processing platform combined with their track
record of operating high volume speech applications for other government bodies,
made them the natural choice.

Gary Bullard, managing director of BT Global Services UK, said: "BT has been
working with Eckoh for several years and in this time has helped a large number
of customers across the public and private sector to successfully transform
their operations and rise to new challenges using speech recognition services.
We are pleased to play our part in providing an effective and reliable solution
which will assist DEFRA in delivering this important project."

Jim Hennigan, Eckoh's managing director, said: "The service has enabled us to
further demonstrate to both DEFRA and indeed other government departments, the
efficiencies, customer service benefits and operational rewards to be gained by
automating a high volume of routine call types. We are particularly delighted to
be working alongside DEFRA on a project of such national significance and look
forward to further developing our relationship with the Department over the
coming months."
                                      ENDS


For further information about Eckoh Technologies

Martin Turner, Chief Executive Officer     Tel: [phone]

Nik Philpot, Chief Operating Officer
Buchanan Communications                    Tel: [phone]
Mark Edwards/Jeremy Garcia


For further information on BT
Inquiries about this news release can also be made to the BT Group Newsroom on
its 24-hour number: 020 7356 5369. From outside the UK, dial [phone].
All BT Group news releases can be accessed at our web site: www.bt.com/
newscentre.

For further information about DEFRA
www.defra.gov.uk

About Eckoh Technologies
Eckoh Technologies plc designs, builds, hosts and manages Speech Solutions for
large corporations and organisations using ASR (Advanced Speech Recognition) and
IVR (Interactive Voice Response) technologies. It is a leading UK service
provider and infrastructure owner/operator, and intends to exploit the
anticipated growth in demand for speech solutions across Europe.

In 2003, Eckoh formed a strategic alliance with BT to capitalise on the growing
opportunity for speech technology in the corporate marketplace. Since 2003, both
parties have combined their core competencies to create an unparalleled customer
service offering in the provision of hosted speech solutions.

The relationship with BT empowers Eckoh to leverage BT's World class Intelligent
Network capability, their CRM expertise and their broader telephony service
offering whilst BT benefits from Eckoh's leading market expertise and technical
skill-set in the design and application of hosted speech solutions.
The combined strengths of both parties have created an unrivalled and
value-added speech proposition and clients of the alliance include: Barclays
Stockbrokers, TD Waterhouse, NIE, UGC Cinemas, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, National
Rail Enquiries and Three Valleys Water.

Eckoh has a call processing platform of 10,000 lines (capable of handling over
650,000 calls an hour) of which over 8,000 lines incorporate speech recognition
technology making it the largest speech enabled call processing platform in
Europe.

Eckoh also operates the following businesses:

   •IVR - Eckoh is one of the largest providers of managed IVR and SMS
    services in the UK to media clients including ITV, BBC, Trinity Mirror,
    Channel 4, Endemol, IPC and EMAP.


   •Network Services - under the "Symphony" and "Anglia" brands, Eckoh
    supplies fixed line and mobile telephony products and services, to SMEs in
    the UK and Ireland. Network Services has an SME customer base of
    approximately 8,000.

In the year to 31 March 2005 Eckoh Technologies plc generated a turnover of
£79.7 million and had a cash balance of £13.3m. Further information can be found
at www.eckoh.com.

About BT
BT is one of the world's leading providers of communications solutions and
services operating in more than 160 Countries. Its principal activities include
networked IT services, local, national and international telecommunications
services, and higher-value broadband and internet products and services. BT
consists principally of four lines of business: BT Global Services, Openreach,
BT Retail and BT Wholesale.

In the year ended 31 March 2005, BT Group's revenue was £18,623 million with
profit before taxation of £2,354 million.

British Telecommunications plc (BT) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of BT Group and
encompasses virtually all businesses and assets of the BT Group. BT Group plc is
listed on stock exchanges in London and New York.

For more information, visit www.bt.com/aboutbt.






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