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BT's new Openreach CEO on the fibre future

We speak to Openreach's new CEO, 35-year-old Olivia Garfield, about the state of British broadband and how BT is going to shape it.

By Tom Brewster, 22 Mar 2011 at 18:06

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It’s rare you see a tech giant employ anyone under the age of 40 in a senior position, but BT has been brave enough to do just that.

The telecoms giant announced 35-year-old Olivia Garfield as the new chief executive (CEO) of Openreach, after former head Steve Robertson chose to step down.

The role will see her effectively take control of BT’s fibre rollout, which should see two thirds of UK homes and businesses able to hook up to next-generation connections. It'll be one heck of a task.

We managed to grab some time with Garfield ahead of her official start date on 1 April to talk about her plans in the CEO role and the wider fibre market.

Now Steve Robertson has left, will there be a shift in strategy or simply a continuation of his work?

I don’t begin until April so I’m in listening mode. I think it’s true of any new chief exec of any company, the key thing first of all is to make sure you actually slip into somebody’s shoes and really understand the business in detail before beginning to prophesise about what you will and won’t do.

The key thing for me is a fibre future. The main thing for us to do, as Steve has said and certainly I support, is to make sure we continue deploying at speed, and at a very competitive cost, our fibre network.

I think that’s what our customers want, they want us to have the best fibre deployment footprint and they want that as quick as possible. Certainly that part of our strategy very much remains.

The other helm of the strategy has been around giving really good customer service and making sure we listen to the market, so that’s not going to go either.

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2 comments

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glad you're listening Liv.

yes, glad you're listening,because you do have a lot to learn. It isn't fibre broadband unless its fibre to the home. Openreach are mainly doing cabinets with fibre and then copper to the home. Not even as good as virgin cable.
You have a lot of listening to do. Listen to the grassroots, your engineers and the groundswell of people fed up because despite your assurances a third of us don't have a decent connection and many are still on dial up.
And stop saying fibre broadband. My dial up is fed with fibre. I don't hear it called fibre dial up though.
I will repeat. It isn't fibre broadband unless its fibre to the home.
FTTH. Not copper crap.
Also you are not donating £2.5 billion, you are supposed to be investing in your business, which you should have been doing for years instead of waiting for government hand outs. Maybe you can turn it all round and make the infrastructure great again, because it has been the best phone network in the world. It can't deliver broadband though, it wasn't designed for that. For real NGA we need fibre.
And moral fibre from the telcos and less of the hype.
Good luck.
chris

By cyberdoyle on Wednesday Mar 23