BT CEO Complains UK Telecoms Operators Pay 10 Times More Than Peers
The CEO of BT Group, Allison Kirkby, appears to be gearing up for the government’s annual 2025 Budget announcement by complaining that the operator pays “10 times the amount our peers pay in countries like Germany and the Netherlands” on things like business rates, energy levies and other costs associated with regulation and compliance.
In the recent past, BT, particularly it’s Openreach network access division, has tended to focus more of its public commentary on calls for greater support in the roll-out of full fibre broadband across the UK. The most common requirements to emerge from that have tended to reflect a strong desire for the full adoption of flexi-permits to boost street works, faster planning approvals and easier access to run new fibre into large residential buildings (MDUs); not to mention a generally softer regulatory regime via Ofcom’s current Telecoms Market Review (TAR).
However, Kirkby also has wider considerations, not least in terms of the rising cost of doing businesses in the UK, which came to the fore this morning as part of her keynote speech to the Connected Britain conference in London.
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BT previously estimated that it would incur a £100m increase in its costs as a result of the last 2024 Budget (mostly due to the rise in National Insurance contributions), and the fear is that this year’s budget could create even bigger challenges.
Allison Kirkby, BT Group CEO, said (FT):
“We pay in business rates, energy levies and other costs associated with regulation and compliance 10 times the amount our peers pay in countries like Germany and the Netherlands … So we’re already at peak government inflicted costs.
We’ve got to make sure that these massive infrastructure groups that will bring billions of pounds to the economy in the coming years … get a return on investment.”
Much of the news media currently still seems to be anticipating more tax rises from the next budget, which is due to be delivered on 26th November 2025. Suffice to say that Kirkby may not get what she wants, particularly while the government are still struggling to find enough money to do everything they desire. But then again, rabbits do sometimes get pulled out of hats on budget day. We’ll find out soon enough.
Kirkby is also an adviser on the government’s Board of Trade.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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She does have a point, the UK now has so much bureaucracy that everything costs twice what it should do. Of course we don’t want a free for all, but bureaucrats being bureaucrats have to constantly add to the administrative burden to justify their existence. Every now and then regulations need to be wholesale cleared out, simplifying them instead of constantly adding to the complexity and throwing out things that simply do not provide a meaningful contribution to protecting people and the environment.
In the modern day world the bureaucracy isn’t the issue, it’s the lack of automation in delivering it that is the issue.
@K: No, bureaucracy is very much still the problem. Automation is not an excuse for excessive bureaucracy and process – and often only makes things more difficult to manage and the problems bigger when the automation screws it up.
Automation and AI is not the panacea of solving all the world’s problems that CEOs like to think it is.
@K says
It is the bureaucracy, not the lack of automation, that is imposing costs and low productivity.
As an example, I get at least nine notifications (via SMS, email, NHS App and letter – two times over except for the letter) for one hospital appointment.
Ten times? That claim doesn’t pass the sniff test. Don’t get me wrong there is too much red tape in this country but a literal order of magnitude more than other similar countries? Not a credible assertion.
On the specific examples given e.g. green levies on energy the comparison does stack up. She’s not talking about energy costs but the non energy costs added on to the total energy bill.
Likewise, Business Rates on property (which for Openreach includes rates on ducts, street cabinets etc etc) are likely higher than across the EU.
And on the planning point / regulation successive governments have accepted there is a problem and then failed to take meaningful action.
The claim is credible.
She’s got a hope. There’s too many grifters making a living out of this BS.
Plenty of companies making guaranteed big profits from green energy
WE now have pretty much the most expensive energy in the world and it is still getting even more expensive
I agree mostly with what she said, but no idea where TEN times comes from. Can only hope their research is thorough, with evidence, as I can’t 100% challenge it 🙂
She’s right.
7k to have a duct installed under 10 meters of cobbles according to virgin.
They said you can pay and we will do it.
We said leave it with us. Another utility was crossed with silver and left us a duct along side there new service and then we allowed virgin to find it.
BT similar deal, copper back to exchange on adsl.
So, high vis on a Sunday and a 30.meter cable clipped up the high street to the Dp that went back to the local fttc box another 25 meters down, as BT didnt want to deal with a wayleave agreement.
Again we left bread crumbs for BT to find the cable.
In both cases we did leave it better than we found it so everyone who knew was happy but it was all done on the hush hush, wink wink.
But this was in the middle of a large town.
There has to be a better solution than cloak and dagger installs.
It is about time that the BT Board turned its guns on Ofcom.
It would seem that it has taken the appointment of the new directors for BT to find its courage.