I was sitting watching the Austria v Poland football match last night trying to remember how on earth England failed to get into the Euro 2008 competition. Still, when I glanced at Fortune magazine today I saw some information that made me feel a certain pride in being English.

Good old British Telecom – now more correctly known at BT Group and driven globally by its BT Global Services division – is going great guns. In the last three months, BT signed more than $1bn of multi-year service management contracts with clients such as AT&T and Verizon. Just this week BT signed a $650m contract with Procter & Gamble to handle data, voice, and networks.

When we look at the use of outsourcing and offshoring by major companies, the detractors often assume it means nothing more than jobs are migrating to lower cost locations. The success of BT in transforming itself into one of the largest global operators in networks and IT services shows that the best technology suppliers are not necessarily in India.