Ben Verwaayen's mum taught him a saying for dealing with detractors. Which is just as well when he is chief executive of BT Group, the telecoms giant which analysts love to hate and rivals seek to break up.

Mrs Verwaayen told her son: "If you point a finger, there are always three fingers pointing back at you."

Some in the City might be considering this insight this morning as BT announced a 1 per cent rise, to £4.60 billion, in turnover.

One per cent hardly sounds spectacular. Especially in a company involved in a telecoms sector still brimming with so-called growth stocks. But for BT, a company facing tough regulation, the decline of its traditional fixed-line markets, growing competition from the likes of Carphone Warehouse's TalkTalk service, it was a victory.

There was something of the two-fingered in Mr Verwaayen's statement that BT had, in the third quarter, achieved its "best underlying revenue growth in almost three years.

"We are winning business across the globe and responding innovatively to an intense competitive environment," he added. Yah boo sucks, and no returns.

Merrill Lynch conceded that it would be "churlish" not to credit BT for the growth being generated by its so-called new wave services, such as broadband and wireless products, which are being developed to fill the growth slot long vacated by the fixed-line phone market.

"We admit, the growth which has been delivered by new wave has far outstripped the expectations we had 12 months ago," Merrill Lynch added, perhaps a touch red faced.

BT's revenues from such services soared to 36 per cent to top £1 billion in a quarter when a new broadband connection was gained every 15 seconds.

Which is a fair achievement for a company which, when Ben Verwaayen joined it, was reeling from the punch of the tech sector collapse and under the burden of some £30 billion of debts run up in a failed international expansion programme. Its growth prospects seemed to have disappeared with the spin-off of mmO2, the mobile phone company.

Yet BT has appreciated, and exploited, the power of the last scraps of silver in the vaults – a strong, if tired, brand and the infrastructure through which broadband services could be fed. Periodic prods from regulators have assisted the process, dissuading BT from a return to the slumbering conceit of a former state monopoly.

The City, however, appears yet to have appreciated the potential of the woken BT. Its shares trade on a price/earnings ratio of 12, equivalent to that of a water company lacking any hope of exploiting, say, broadband pipes. The stock's dividend yield, at about 4.5 per cent, is comparable too.

BT's debts are down to £8.26 billion – large but serviceable with BT's heavy cash flow, which has also allowed a 22 per cent increase in its interim dividend.

Furthermore, Mr Verwaayen's non-pointing hands appear to have a firm grip on the future of technological progress and the globalisation it will enhance and allow, even if, as a Dutch national, his grasp on English is less secure.

"You don't need to be a genius to smell the coffee," is another of his sayings.

You need merely, like BT, to be awake.

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