As a new football season begins, BT has parked even bigger tanks on Sky’s lawn in its fight for retail customers, but for Inverness-raised Graham Sutherland the business telecoms battleground is just as exciting.

Appointed the first chief executive of BT Business two years ago, the Heriot-Watt accountancy graduate has a 10,000-strong army, 1200 of them in Scotland, in a campaign to stay ahead of a market of 300 players in the fast-changing world of converged communications.

A member of BT’s operating committee who reports directly to the big chief Gavin Patterson, Mr Sutherland runs a £3billion business with 900,000 small business customers, 70,000 of them North of the Border.

“BT Sport has been fantastic for the group, over five million customers are using it now which is a tremendous achievement after only two years, it has been pretty disruptive to the market so we are very encouraged with progress,” Mr Sutherland says.

“At BT Business we are going to lead the convergiance of fixed and mobile, and the services that will bring to business, and as networks and IT requirements converge we are also looking very closely at how we can provide and manage not just data connections but all the services companies need to operate.”

BT is a tiny player in mobile, with only one percent of the business market, just getting into its stride with the deal to acquire EE which is yet to complete. In the growing market for IT services, BT is already the third biggest player but with a share of only six per cent.

Mr Sutherland says: “In general the business telecoms market is fiercely competitive, we would compete against over 300 companies, but we are seeing consolidation beginning to take place.”

Pure IT companies, big integrators, and the likes of IBM, are all entering the telecoms space. BT believes that in the mid-market of businesses with 50 to 250 employees, a third of firms will outsource all their IT to partners, with many moving to the cloud.

“We are going to strengthen our regional presence around Scotland with more technical capability and support,” Mr Sutherland says. “There is certainly going to be increased employment.”

He adds: “A lot is changing, technology trends, and the move towards converged products – integrated fixed and mobile, integrated network and IT products – is really taking hold,” says the quietly-spoken Highlander. “Demand for data and the speed of networks is becoming really important to all of our customers, we are also seeing big stresses from businesses around seamless and reliable connectivity becoming absolutely critical. You have also got the proliferation of devices – customers want to do everything on their smartphone, on their tablets, wherever they are, this is driving a lot of customer demand, high standards, high service requirement.”

Digitisation is also being used by enterprises large and small to enhance productivity, Mr Sutherland says. “All these trends are quite a big influence on our strategy.”

In the past year BT has launched OnePhone, offering all fixed phone capabilities on a mobile, then Cloudvoice and Cloudphone, with services hosted in the cloud and no physical equipment on the premises.

Larger firms can also opt for ethernet services for seamless connections between premises and globally, complete with IT services.

Mr Sutherland says: “This year EE is the big thing for us, we have had an offer accepted and are going through the CMA approval process, hopefully that will be finished sometime in the first quarter of the next calendar year. It is very exciting from a business point of view, it will enable us to.....create a lot of new services and innovation in the market.”

BT has made no secret of its desire for an eventual switch-off of the fixed network for which its Openreach arm has statutory responsibility.

It plans to move all domestic and business customers to internet-based voice calls within a decade, and is hopeful that the regulator will remove the obligation to run the traditional infrastructure, freeing up cash to invest in broadband upgrades.

The former state monopoly argues that this is the only way to level the playing-field with the likes of Apple and Facebook, which can compete for customers via mobile apps such as WhatsApp but without any regulatory burdens.

The industry sees Apple in particular as a serious threat, with its consumer loyalty potentially enabling it to force telecoms providers into a subservient role as mere wholesalers.

Mr Sutherland says: “Our view is that over time all traffic will be carried in this way....there are some fairly substantial regulatory reviews going on, and the key is to getting to a stage where regulation is appropriate to encourage investment for the long-term. We have been a big investor in research and development and rolling out a fibre network in the UK, we want to make sure the conditions exist for the next stage of that journey - because it is critical for economic development.”

BT is heavily invested in Scotland, from its branding of Murrayfield to its 7000 employees and community connections. Much of the country has had to wait for high-speed broadband, but today’s 65 per cent availability will be up at 90 per cent by the end of next year, Mr Sutherland says, with 5000 premises a week now joining the fibre network.

“The most exciting development in this roll-out is the opportunity it is creating in local economies. We have got some examples of rural Scottish companies showing the importance of high-speed networks and fixed and mobile convergiance. Scotland is a rapidly evolving landscape...we are seeing companies that used to serve local market now becoming exporters large and small.”

Inevitably BT is heavily involved in the Scottish Government’s economic strategy, and its ‘Digital Scotland’ ambition to make Scotland ‘a world-class digital nation by 2020’.

Mr Sutherland says: “I think things have changed a lot in the last couple of years. Improved working between the public and private sectors is critical, and the work that is being done by the BT and the Scottish Government to move the quality of the network forward is the catalyst for the kind of real step in the digital agenda.” He says after the network roll-out, “we need to shift the debate to stimulating demand and helping companies into new markets.”

He adds: “If we don’t have the skills or the confidence to take businesses forward and take on new markets, we are just not going to get the return for the capital investment that has been put into the ground, that is investment by the Scottish Government and BT, and that is the big issue for the Scottish economy as we go forward.”