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.
Advertisement
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.
Advertisement
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.”
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 and Linkedin.
« Openreach Give FTTP on Demand Broadband a Stay of Execution
Latest UK ISP News
- FTTP (5918)
- BT (3618)
- Politics (2679)
- Business (2396)
- Openreach (2387)
- Building Digital UK (2312)
- Mobile Broadband (2099)
- FTTC (2074)
- Statistics (1871)
- 4G (1771)
- Virgin Media (1724)
- Ofcom Regulation (1554)
- Fibre Optic (1455)
- Wireless Internet (1445)
- FTTH (1384)
“…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.”
It’s “neutral with a hard edge” and amusing reporting like this that keeps me coming back to ISPreview.
Not neutral, the author is a remainer, the CEO wasn’t blaming Brexit but the current recruitment process, of which, as a leaver, I agree with him.
I’m a human being and a pragmatist, sorry. I did try to highlight both sides above, but it wasn’t my interview, so I’ve reflected the key points and moved on to the next article.
Fed up of hearing companies whinge over cheap labour from abroad.
Time to get the *abled* workers who rather claim benefits out to do work and prisoners who are in for non violent crime (like financial fraud as just one example) to do the work. Roads, infrastructure etc. Give some of the unemployed a job/purpose and prisoners get to give something back to society by having to work.
This is a fantasy. You can’t just round up a posse at the local job centre and get them immediately doing skilled work like laying infrastructure, you need to spend time and money upskilling people before they even lay a cable or terminate a fiber. Not to mention that you need to find people who want to do the job, you take a bunch of people who don’t care about the work, you’re just creating crappy infrastructure for someone else to fix later.
IMO the strategy needs to be twofold – use those skilled resources from elsewhere in the short term while upskilling those who want to help build and maintain our infrastructure.
There was a bunch doing cabling around my area and not one of them was speaking English.
They were all (four of them) talking in some language I didn’t understand. They looked like they were fresh out of school too, not a hair of stubble on any of them so someone trained them up to do the job. Why would we be unable to train someone from our own country to do that? Why would you prefer to train outsiders?
Or are you one of those that think British people just don’t work and prefer to sit at home claiming benefits. Or that we actually don’t want the jobs that others come and take. Or, the last one .. that you and your ma must be bad people if you let an immigrant come and take the same job? Doesn’t matter if your ma forgave an education and a career and worked hard to put you through school and put food on your plate, she’s a bad person and isn’t trying enough if someone can come take her job she must have been bad at her job right?
Also skilled? Fibre?
You know how a splicer works right?
Insert cable on left. Insert cable on right. Wrap insulator around area to be fused, press button. Test splice (press another button and wait for “OK”). Job done. Or did you think you need years of training to do this?
Yeah you need to understand how fibre works (again, 5 minutes learning total internal reflection). The engineers themselves won’t know what different modes of fibre are, can’t name you a wavelength in nanometers etc.
Sorry but this isn’t a “highly skilled” job and Openreach should train some people instead of whinging about not having access to cheap labour that cuts out British jobs.
@Tony Ben’s Butler
Get back to reading the Daily Mail.
@Tony Benn’s Butler: “Why would we be unable to train someone from our own country to do that? Why would you prefer to train outsiders?”
If you actually read my message I advocated for training people for the long term and using guest workers for the short term, which seems to be what we’re doing. What I labelled fanciful is the idea of rounding up the unemployed and forcing them to lay infrastructure as “anonymous” insisted we should do.
Your tone is patronising, civils work, laying ducting to the relevant specifications and ensuring fibers are correctly terminated so that they withstand decades of wear and tear is all skilled work however little you think of the people doing the grunt work.
Phoenixw You have misunderstood my comment. My fault.
I am advocating for training people from the UK as I think you are too (and for what it’s worth, I don’t care about their nationality, I care that they’re British or at least resident here) over foreigners. Why is it wrong to look after our own I wonder?
I do not think little of those people either. But I’m not going to pretend that laying a cable in the street requires a masters degree either. Because it doesn’t. I don’t think my binman is highly skilled, doesn’t mean I don’t respect him. I wish people would not automatically say you think this or your comment is that. That is your interpretation of it.
We can train people in our own country. I see nothing wrong with this. That doesn’t make me a right-wing brexiteer nutter either since I voted remain and vote for Labour.
I had written a reply. But it’s been censored and not published. Good job I have an unlimited number of IP addresses at my disposal.
You have got to be joking, get prisoners to do work which would then release the experts at road building so they could be trained to do work like fibre jointing and laying. Sounds like a plan!
The problem is the education system is geared towards baby sitting rather than actual education so the end result is a few talented individuals and hoards of unskilled workers (-ology degrees don’t count), and if you’re a skilled individual, you don’t have to put up with the high taxes, you can go elsewhere.
I know at least 2 contracting companies who have several Portuguese engineers. It is possible to still get them, just you can’t roll up to a telecoms in a poor country and then poach cheap engineers like you could before, maintaining salaries low in the UK.
Brexit certainly helped engineer salaries rise since they are not disposable anymore which is actually what Mr evil openreach CEO is complaining about
er, i’m left-wing and I vote Labour. You know Tony Benn was Labour right?
Why would I read a right-wing rag like the DM? Or is that your catch-all response to situations you are incapable of responding to?
Splicing and running fibre is not a skilled job. Or else why do 17 year olds with 0 training and education do the job? Pressing a button on a fibre splice is not highly skilled. We can train our own people to do the job. There is nothing wrong with doing that. It is not brextieer/DM/Gammon or whatever other childish insult people have for giving our own people a chance first before someone from outside. You know, like most of the world does like America/Australia/Most of Asia.
But yeah go ahead and try to label me as this or that because you have no actual argument.
Tony Benn? The trouble with his logic is that in the 1970s we had cost/push inflation where people thought they were getting pay rises and all they got was inflation which ate their pay rise.
We now have a classic shortage of labour, whether caused by Brexit and/or accelerated economic changes due to the pandemic. Yes, companies will have to adjust, automate and train school-leavers up etc.
I doubt if free movement of labour is coming back even with a more EU friendly government in the future. Maybe some sort of customs deals to get rid of paperwork for Lorry drivers etc, but that will be it.
The shortage of labor has existed even before Brexit, it’s been building steadily for years as the education system becomes even more useless.
Train local people don’t blame brexit.
I am born an bought up in london where is the opportunity compenies like openreach love Europeans.
Now I don’t work in HR or recruitment….. but spelling companies that way may prove a barrier for you.
*and *brought *London *companies *Openreach.
If this comment is indicative of the standard of your English in regular life I think Europeans are the least of your worries as far as opportunities go.
The site removed text in between angled brackets however your comment should have a colon or full stop after London and a question mark after opportunity.
Again if this is your standard level of English it’s not even secondary school level and given you are born and bred in London I would love to know what you were doing at school for 11 years.
Regardless you’ll have to find another scapegoat for that you’ve few opportunities. I would consider starting with a mirror.
Openreach has been hiring and training thousands of engineers for several years. 4k this year at the last look. So i don’t think anyone in their right mind can accuse them of not hiring local people.
Glad to see the Queen’s English is forefront in your minds lads. None of you ever made a typo or spelled anything incorrectly on a forum. Oh and “An Engineer” you are missing some punctuation there yourself old boy.
“lads”?
Gah sorry that was un-intentional. I’m all for women in tech.
OMFG are we no better than “local jobs for local people” any more? Brexit bigots out in force again “Why don’t we train our own” “Why should we let those dirty foreigners into our country to steal all our jobs”. Mainly because contrary to what the sub human scum at the Daily Mail or UKiP sold you it’s not that easy. Nor is it always the right thing, or sensible.
For front loaded tasks like broadband rollout, getting “cheaper” labour that’s already trained on a temporary basis from other countries is a damn good way to deal with the extreme front loaded demand. Then you train and fill the BAU posts with UK labour once it’s all in place.
Who do you think is PAYING for all that training? What do those engineers do with their new found training once the work associated with the rollout dries up in 4 or 5 years? Because thanks to Brexit they’re not taking their skills into Europe any more that’s for sure.
Voted remain. Vote Labour. Prefer to train British people than foreigners.
REeEeEeeEEeeE BreXit GaMmOn DaIlY mAiL rEaDeRs. ItS RaCiSt tO TrAiN yOuR oWn PeOpLe.
Awesome discourse today.
Funny most of the comments are not Brexit as we were baited into retorting to. They’re about Openreach not hiring UK workers. Apparently commenters are not allowed to make that comment, it upsets the Openreach employees and their contractors on here.
Openreach the greatest. Introducing fibre 30 years after everyone else did and still doing a bad job.
Ha, it’s not t hat they’re “not allowed to make that comment” – it’s really just about replying with facts. Openreach employs around 38k UK workers so can hardly be accused of not providing UK jobs. Mr Selley’s comments were clearly about supporting other companies across the industry who would like the option to hire more people from overseas where the UK market can’t provide them.
Dont think many were deploying fibre 30 years ago…
Alex A. They were.
1994 – Sweden.
1997 – Romania.
1999 – Japan.
1999 – Italy.
2000 – South Korea.
Shall I go on? because I don’t want someone saying well that’s only 5. Beacuse I only picked 5. There are many more. We have some of the worst broadband in Europe but our politicians tell us it’s “World leading” (they don’t say what it leads at , maybe being last)
@Anon
Here is some data from 2009 (the references to Sweden having a large open access fibre network in 1994 were all seemingly marketing for companies like VXFIBER, would be happy to see more on it) https://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2009/09/07/sweden-tops-european-ftth-ranking/ . Sweden only had 10.9% penetration and that was high. While there would have been some deployment back in the 90s it would be small scale.
@Anon – 85% gigabit is the worse?
As ‘everyone’ knows Thatcher stopped the earlier roll out of fibre not BT.
Considering they have tried very hard to avoid to upgrading the network for the last 20 odd years, I’m going to call BS on this one.
anon
the ability to provide selective data about incorrect information you seem to be the master of and is in of the primary reason i spend less and less time on these forurms and more actually helping bridge the fibre digital divide in the UK
let me know when you invested 5 – 8bn of your own money to build a fibre network then you can wait for people like you to moan on forums like this about your lack of investment , worng invesment , etc etc etc
It’s terrible large companies are having to pay people more rather than rely on open borders and cheap labour to depress wages. Absolutely awful.
The racism and protectionism in these comments is scary.
You beat me to it @drevilbob
If you love open borders you must also like poverty and hate British workers.
Oh please, job vacancies are at an all time high, the current issues with poverty are linked Westminster whose complete lack of morals and actual hatred of the working class. I’m happy for anybody who is capable of doing the job to have it because at the end of the day they’re providing a needed service and are helping the economy by doing so. So stop with your small mindedness and bigotry.
@drevilbob Total rubbish, open borders depress wages and we’ve seen the pressure to pay more since leaving. And you turn up throwing vile words like racist around despite the fact you can’t even manage to understand basic supply and demand economics and wages.
Complete and utter Rubbish, we are worse situation than we were before closing the borders. Wages aren’t rising if anything they’re stagnant. Open borders has nothing to do with the current poverty issues in this country. We have a skills problem in this country and people like you refuse to see it. Look at the lack of lorry drivers as an example; people don’t want to do it and still you say that open borders are taking away from British citizens. I will not detract my previous comments as far as I can see you have a bigoted view, these so called “foreigners” have the skills to do the job.
You aren’t welcome here; we are a welcoming community who don’t care about creed and share a common interest in networking.
@devilbob Unpleasant person who starts posting by throwing toxic insults around(i.e. you) claims other people aren’t welcome to comment … absolutely laughable. Troll elsewhere.
I’m toxic, hmmm, let’s see who started because it certainly wasn’t me but hey I can’t bully stupid people. Now bugger off back off to your conservative club.
Just to add; your comments are xenophobic, you just don’t like the fact someone called you out on it but hey I get it you’re scared of the big bad man from Europe taking your job, easier to blame that than the own inabilities…..
I’m sensing a lot of support for the CWU as they seek to level up British worker’s pay rather than employ cheap labour and backing for their pay dispute / strike ballot that is landing on BT Group staff’s doormats this week.
@Mark Jackson
If you’re going to publish stories bemoaning Brexit you’re going to get all these crazy comments supporting one side or the other. I suspect you haven’t lived in isolation and supported remain as those types of people keep digging up Brexit stories.
This site publishes press releases and newspaper articles usually with editorial comment.
The headline in the FT is “BT executive says Brexit is slowing superfast broadband rollout”. Not sure why the site should censor articles that are uncomfortable for either Brexit or Rejoin supporters.
Meanwhile Openreach are allowing fibre skilled engineers take redundancy. The engineers taking redundancy are those mainly on better contracts than what is offered to newcomers.
I’ve not noticed any redundancy schemes for fibre skilled engineers. Please could you provide more details of these schemes and terms on offer. Asking for a friend.
Oh jesus… Lots of triggered people in the comment section today
“Inevitable crap storm”…. Check. 😉
If someone asked you to casually walk off a cliff, would you do it because you were egged on?
Collectively, the UK has fallen off a cliff, bashed our heads on the way down, and we are now struggling to pull ourselves up it again.
We’re also stuck 2 fingers up to any passers by.