Dear old BT. Bless 'em. Even on St Patrick's Day they couldn't organise a booze up in a pub.

The mighty telco has just launched a fixed and mobile calls combo for businesses.

According to Bill Murphy, MD of BT Business: "This plan goes significantly further than the offering from competitors like Orange. What's more, this service is already working, it's available now and it's been on trial successfully since July, delivering tangible benefits to customers.

Wow. Sounds great. So we checked out BT's website to find out more. "Sorry, but we've been unable to find a match for your query", was the reply from BT.com.

So we called a PR just to check. "Is it still not up?" he said.

Strange. So we called BT's sales staff to find out more about BT Business Plan with Mobile.

"It hasn't actually come out yet," said the operator helpfully. "We were only given brief details yesterday." After a very long pause during which he was trying to find out more info he passed us on to a lovely lady with a fab Irish accent.

So we asked again about BT Business Plan with Mobile.

"We don't know about that," she said. What? So we read the details of the package from the press release. "They haven't filtered this down to us yet," she said. "We only do landlines."

But didn't Bill Murphy say the service is "already working" and "available now"? Oh, and that trial that's been ongoing since last July? Big trial do you think? Well, if 20 businesses constitutes a big trial, then yes. ®

Related stories

• Vodafone eyes fixed line service (20 March 2006)
• BT unveils fixed-mobile combo (17 March 2006)
• Bulldog targets SMEs (15 March 2006)
• BT, Skype woo SMEs (13 March 2006)
• Small.biz ill-equipped for IT threats (2 March 2006)
• Orange offers SMEs fixed line phone service (24 February 2006)
• UK SMEs 'penalised' by inflexible licences (21 February 2006)
• Small biz owners' stress levels shoot up (20 February 2006)
• BT boss bigs up broadband for SMEs (17 January 2006)