ar indication of our success in transforming BT from a traditional telco to a networked IT services company through innovation." Mike said there were three reasons why BT has invested more in R&D: the increasing level of networked IT business it performs; the massive investment in the 21st century network; and the new products and services it develops - such as the digital TV service BT Vision, the wholesale mobile entertainment service BT Movio and the ground-breaking fixed-to-mobile service BT Fusion. These statements are always a hostage to fortune. This depressing Press Release on the 26 November 2010 tells the story for us; The Department for Business Innovation and Skills R and D scoreboard, the twentieth and last version of the annual publication, was published on Thursday. BIS is scrapping the scoreboard as part of wider government cuts. In the words of science and innovation minister David Willetts, in the introduction to the 2010 report, the publication is no longer necessary because "today's companies better understand the importance of R&D to their long-term success". In the fixed-line telecoms sector, investment was 48 percent less than its operating profit. Companies in the sector cut R&D spending by just over eight percent - this closely mirrored the decrease in BT's R&D expenditure - but its operating profits grew by 513 percent. In the same period, sales in this sector fell by 2.7 percent. Both BT and Vodafone recorded an increase in operating profit in 2009, of 370 percent and 64 percent, respectively," the report added. "Similarly to 2008, R&D expenditure in the UK software and computer services sector grew more quickly than sales in 2009,". This suggests several things. Privatised companies have to deliver short-term returns to shareholders and the management team are given substantial incentives to achieve these returns. A short-term mechanism for achieving this is to reduce R and D expenditure. Additionally for BT, this R and D effort is now diluted across a far wider base that has to encomp