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Clive Selley to replace Joe Garner at helm of U.K. incumbent’s local access network arm this quarter.
BT on Monday announced that Clive Selley will take over as the new CEO of its Openreach division in the next few weeks.
Selley is currently chief executive of BT Technology, Service and Operations, the unit responsible for running BT’s networks and systems globally. He also serves as BT’s group CIO.
He will replace Joe Garner at Openreach, who resigned late last year to become chief executive of the Nationwide building society. Garner is still with Openreach; the handover will take place this quarter, BT said.
"I am honoured to have been asked to lead Openreach at this important point in its history," Selley said, in a statement.
He is indeed taking over at a crucial juncture for Openreach, 10 years – as of Monday – after its formation as the U.K. incumbent’s local access network business.
Openreach came into being as a result of a strategic review into the U.K. market by regulator Ofcom, which sought to boost competition in the fixed broadband space; providing equivalence of access to BT’s network infrastructure was a core tenet of Openreach’s function.
A decade on and the regulator is once again conducting a market review, this time amidst calls from many of BT’s rivals – Sky, Virgin Media, Vodafone and TalkTalk being amongst the most vocal – to force a complete structural separation of the business from BT.
BT, naturally, is campaigning forcefully against such a move, reminding the market of the investment it has ploughed into its infrastructure over the past 10 years, something that would not have happened had Openreach not been part of the BT group, it insists.
Selley picked up that refrain on Monday.
"The huge investment [Openreach] has made over the past decade has made the U.K. a broadband leader, and we need to build on those foundations by deploying fibre to further communities and by rolling out ultrafast broadband," he said.
"Customer service is a top priority of mine and I am committed to delivering further improvements by working closely with all industry partners who rely on our network to serve their customers," he added.
Thus, it seems we can expect more of the same from BT in the coming months, as the Ofcom review progresses. Selley looks set to be a busy man.
