LONDON – BT , Britain’s biggest broadband provider, said it was ready to play its part in achieving new Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s ambition to roll out full fibre across the country as it met market expectations for first-quarter trading on Friday.
“On network investment, we welcome the government’s ambition for full-fibre broadband across the country and we are confident we will see further steps to stimulate investment,” Chief Executive Philip Jansen said.
“We are ready to play our part to accelerate the pace of roll-out, in a manner that will benefit both the country and our shareholders, and we are engaging with the government and (regulator) Ofcom on this.”
Johnson said Britain had to accelerate the roll-out of full-fibre broadband to homes and businesses in his campaign to become prime minister and after taking office last month.
He said a government target for complete full-fibre coverage by 2033 was “laughably unambitious”.
BT plans to roll out fibre to 4 million premises by March 2021, and has said it could connect 15 million by the mid-2020s if the government and regulator make it worth its while.
Jansen said taking fibre to all premises across the UK by 2025 would “be a major feat of engineering that will require significant investment, planning and also manpower”.
He said the government needed to take quick, decisive action to allow BT to make a fair return on investment, mandate that customers switch to the ultrafast service and give telecom firms the same permission to dig up roads as other utilities.
“If we can do that then I know BT can go both faster and further than our current fibre build ambitions,” he told reporters.
He said Ofcom needed to be clear about the return BT would be allowed to secure on its investment, given that the cost of roll-out for the whole country would be 30 billion pounds plus.
Chief Financial Officer Simon Lowth said Ofcom had deemed that 15% was a fair return on earlier “fibre to the cabinet” investment, and that was a clear benchmark on the sort of returns needed to drive “fibre to the premises”.
“Fibre to the cabinet” uses existing copper wires for the final connection into customers’ homes. “Fibre to the premises” is the gold standard broadband, offering speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second.
The company, which owns Britain’s biggest mobile operator EE, reported a 1% fall in first-quarter adjusted revenue to 5.63 billion pounds ($6.82 billion) and adjusted core earnings to 1.96 billion pounds.
The numbers were ahead of analysts’ forecasts of 5.59 billion pounds and 1.89 billion pounds, according to a company-compiled consensus.
Analysts at Jefferies, however, said the beat was low quality with a material contribution from “other”, and a miss in the consumer division meant there was no obvious basis for forecast upgrades.
Shares in the company were trading down nearly 5% at 185 pence at 0830 GMT.
(Content & Photos Syndicated Via Reuters)
(Reporting by Paul Sandle; Editing by Michael Holden, Jan Harvey and Dale Hudson)