Waters Rankings 2019: Best Network Provider: BT

For the fifth consecutive year, BT has been voted the best network provider thanks to its Radianz Cloud offering. Its dominance in this competitive space is driven by a number of factors, chief among them its close attention to the latest technological and regulatory changes taking place in the capital markets.  

According to Yousaf Hafeez, head of business development at BT Radianz, over the past 12 months, the provider has been growing the number of users on its managed services offering, as well as expanding geographically. Regions where it has seen increased interest include Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa.

One of its notable success stories is China, where Hafeez says it is actively working to grow the number of capital markets participants using BT Radianz. Last year, it became the first international telecommunications provider to receive a license from the China Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. “No other international carrier has the same license as we do,” he says. “What that means is we are the first carrier who can offer services in China domestically, or take orders domestically.”

Another milestone was its onboarding of Gemini, the crypto exchange started by the Winklevoss twins, which joined the BT Radianz Cloud broker community earlier this year. According to Hafeez, using mature technologies to explore crypto assets is becoming increasingly important for customers. “It is an area where we are continuing to progressively add more and more applications,” he says. “What we are looking to do is have applications in the crypto area that cover the whole spectrum of trading from pre-trade, to some of the emerging clearing custodial services for crypto as well.”   

Additionally, Hafeez says BT is adding more alternative datafeeds to its BT Radianz network, such as sentiment data feeds, satellite imagery, phone records and credit card information.h