Joe Garners thoughts, and some statistics .............
Folks
You will have seen the announcement this morning that Clive Selley, CEO Technology Service and Operations, has been appointed as the new CEO of Openreach. I believe that this is great news for Openreach; Clive will bring over 30 years’ experience in the sector along with his engineering background and his in-depth knowledge of our network and technologies.
Clive’s appointment carries my full support, and I would like to ask that you give him a warm Openreach welcome, and help as he continues our mission to build Britain’s connected future.
This is fantastic news to add to our day of celebration on Openreach’s tenth birthday. More than half our people have been at Openreach since the beginning and have experienced that evolution first hand, whilst others have joined more recently, but we’ve all played a part in making our organisation what it is today.
Let’s reflect on some of the highlights of the enormous changes of the last ten years…
Customers
Ten years ago, only a tenth of our business was from outside BT Group – today it is approaching half.
We had hardly any LLU customers, and today we're approaching 10 million – ten times the original forecast.
And fibre was not even on the agenda 10 years ago, but today we have over 5 million fibre end customers.
We’ve grown our Ethernet business significantly from just 1,000 circuits in 2006 to nearly 200,000 today. Most recently, despite increasing customer demands, we have more than halved customer complaints over the last few years, and we're still making progress despite the huge operation pressures of the recent weather events.
People
Our people have remained loyal and committed to our business, despite the amount of change. The tools we work with have changed greatly, and we’ve gone from being a laptop based business, to 20,000 of us now using iPhones (half with reach365 downloaded on them).
We’ve had an improving safety record with LTIs decreasing from 5.48 per million hours worked in 2006 to 3.02 per million hours worked in the last 12 months.
In the Challenge Cup we’ve won five out of the last ten yearly competitions, which is outstanding.
We are leading through a period of unprecedented change, but doing so to protect our future for the next ten years.
Network
We’ve transformed our network and moved from analogue to digital and from voice to data. We’ve enabled the UK's need for speed delivering an average UK broadband speed of 28Mbps now compared to 1.6Mbps ten years ago. We now have 24m homes passed with fibre, 3.5m of which were delivered by working in partnership with BDUK.
We were the first official infrastructure partner in the 2012 Olympic games - the most connected games in history. We provided the network to 54 venues across the UK and 2012 was the first Olympics never to have a category 1 telecoms failure.
Stakeholders
Openreach was created as part of the Ofcom telecoms strategic review in 2005, and over the last 10 years, we’ve delivered a massive 254 undertakings. In the middle of the DCR – the ten year review of these undertakings, it is clear that they have been a success.
We’re valued for making a difference in the communities we operate in, with just 3% of us volunteering in 2006 to 26% in the last year.
Shareholders
Over the last 10 years we’ve invested £10.5 billion in Britain’s digital infrastructure, committing over £3 billion to create a nationwide fibre network to provide affordable high-speed broadband to the vast majority of the UK.
We’ve also given back £5.8 billion in price reductions to our customers since 2006, which means that telephone and broadband prices from Openreach have been falling over the period – unlike most other things that people buy.
Thank you for everything you’ve personally contributed since joining Openreach, I’m constantly impressed by the loyalty, commitment and skills of our people. We have a critically important role to play in society; to keep the nation connected to the internet. We are proud to be custodians of the UK telecommunications network – an invaluable national resource that plays a vital role in our everyday lives, and the crown jewel of the BT Group.
