Openreach CEO Appears to Blame Brexit for Pace of Broadband Build UPDATE

The CEO of network access provider Openreach (BT), Clive Selley, appears to have risked a spat with the UK Government after he complained that the rollout of faster broadband services (e.g. gigabit-capable FTTP) had been slowed by the “tortuous” post-Brexit process of recruiting workers from the EU.

These days, even the mere mention of the word ‘Brexit‘ tends to require the donning of a crash helmet, usually in anticipation of the inevitable crap storm that ensues as supporters of one side or the other engage in ritual muck slinging, often absent of any constructive debate.

As such, it may come as a surprise to see Openreach’s CEO daring to highlight the challenges they now face with recruitment, as covered in a new FT interview (paywall). But in fairness to Selley, none of his quotes actually appear to use the B-word and this could thus be more a reflection of the newspaper’s own interpretation.

Nevertheless, it’s well-known that finding UK fibre engineers with the necessary skills remains a challenging task, which is one reason why so many operators have established their own in-house training schools, but this takes time. Prior to Brexit, businesses would have looked to other EU countries to fill shortfalls (Spain and Portugal have plenty of engineers as their respective builds near completion), but the Home Office is making this difficult.

“They want the work, we want the skills and the Home Office have a process that is tortuous … We are constraining the rate of fibre build in the UK through the process,” said Selley, before adding that he would take 1,000 such engineers (contractors) from the EU tomorrow if he could. In fairness, Openreach are still managing to ramp-up their build without this and are reaching c.58,000 premises per week (up from c.41,000 a year ago).

In response, the Home Office merely confirmed that they have a points-based immigration system and “people are eligible to come if they meet the requirements“. However, one Government aide said that ministers were reportedly becoming tired with companies complaining about the system, effectively shifting the blame back to businesses and accusing them of having failed to plan better.

Selley also indicated that it was “achievable” and “realistic” for Openreach to potentially lay full fibre lines to 97% of UK homes by 2030, provided they secured plenty of public subsidy from the government (e.g. the £5bn Project Gigabit programme). But there’s no mention of precisely how much subsidy they would require to hit 97% and, in any case, other operators are involved in that programme.

On the subject of competition from alternative network providers (e.g. CityFibre, Hyperoptic, CommunityFibre, Gigaclear etc.), Selley largely reiterated past comments by saying that he expected the number of rivals to be whittled down over the coming years (e.g. consolidation and a few failures). Openreach’s approach, said the CEO, was simply to “build unbelievably quickly … and then sell fast“. Recent results suggest that is working (here), but many of their rivals have the same idea.

UPDATE 15th June 2022

We’ve had a comment come in from Openreach.

A Spokesperson for Openreach said:

“At Openreach, we’ve been successful in creating thousands of jobs and apprenticeships over the last few years – and we continue to hire and train people at a record rate – so we’re on track to deliver our ambitious targets. But access to labour is extremely tight across the entire industry, and particularly for construction partners, so that is having an effect on the overall pace of build.

We want as many homes and business as possible to experience the benefits of ultrafast, ultra-reliable full fibre broadband, so we’d welcome any measures to ease this constraint temporarily whilst the build is in full swing.”