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News

The company’s streamlining efforts continue amid revenue decline

BT has released its latest quarterly figures, revealing the extent of job cuts that have taken place over the first half of the financial year.

The figures show that the company’s headcount has been reduced by around 6% in this financial year to date, representing around 5,000 jobs, bringing the company’s total headcount to roughly 111,000.

These job cuts contributed significantly to the almost £250 million in cost savings BT has achieved in the same period.

The move is part of a long-term downsizing strategy from BT, which began in earnest in 2023 under the leadership of ex-CEO Philip Jansen. At that time, the company said it would aim to reduce costs by £3 billion by 2025, a goal that was subsequently met a year ahead of schedule.

This streamlining process has been further accelerated under new CEO Allison Kirkby, who took over the role in February 2024. Kirkby has pledged further restructuring, with BT now targeting yet another £3 billion in cost savings by 2029.

Job cuts, naturally, play a key role in this strategy. BT said in 2023 that the company is aiming to reduce its workforce by around 55,000 by the end of the decade, a move which would leave it with 75,000–90,000 staff.

Besides headcount reduction, BT’s results revealed a company still grappling with a highly competitive market. Revenues were down by 3% to £9.8 billion in H1, year-on-year, with pre-tax reduced by 11% year-on-year to £862 million. Much of this reduction, the company said, could be attributed to a fall in legacy landline services and a weaker mobile market.

The company is also under pressure in the fixed broadband sector.

Openreach, the company’s fibre network subsidiary, reported that its fibre network rollout has passed 20 million premises and remains on track to hit the company’s goal of 25 million by December 2026. However, Openreach CEO Clive Selley says the company is preparing to ‘hold fire’ on additional approvals for the additional 5 million premises needed to reach its 2030 target of 30 million until the Telecoms Access Review

The company added 1.1 million new full fibre customers in H1; however, this was not enough to offset customer losses elsewhere, with the company noting an overall decline of 242,000 broadband customers in Q2. Openreach said these losses were the result of strong competition and a weaker broadband market.

Despite this seemingly bumpy road, Kirkby maintains that the company’s wider transformation to greater growth remains on track.

“BT is delivering on its strategy in competitive markets. Since the start of the year, we’ve driven customer growth across consumer broadband, mobile and TV and we’re stabilising our UK-focused business division,” said Kirkby. “Outside the UK, we’ve completed strategic exits and we’re reshaping our international unit. BT’s transformation is delivering ahead of plan, as our UK focus and radical simplification and modernisation are helping to offset declines from our international and legacy businesses and higher labour-related costs since the start of this tax year.”

In related news in tandem with the quarterly results release, BT also announced a new deal with SpaceX’s Starlink to use the latter’s satellites to deliver connectivity across the UK’s hard-to-reach areas. Commercial launch is expected in the latter half of 2026.

Virgin Media O2 announced a similar arrangement with Starlink last week.

Also in the news
Connected Britain Award winners 2025 announced!
Netomnia announces ‘powerful and ambitious’ rebrand ahead of Connected Britain
VodafoneThree drops Samsung, relies on Nokia and Ericsson for £2bn network upgrade

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

New customers looking to join Virgin Media may like to know that they’ve kicked off their Black Friday sale this week, which is offering the first three months of service for free across many of their broadband packages, including some major TV and TV + O2 SIM bundles. This is on top of the discounted monthly rental prices they were already running.

For example, the provider’s 264Mbps broadband-only package is now free for the first 3 months of service on a 24-month minimum term, before becoming £24.99 per month thereafter (rising to £28.99 from April 2026 and £32.99 from April 2027). New subscribers will also receive an included wireless router and free setup etc.

The new offers will be available to order until 10th December 2025.

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The UK communications, internet and media regulator, Ofcom, has today announced that they’ve agreed to work “more closely” with their counterparts in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The move aims to “strengthen the security and resilience of telecoms networks” and tackle consumer-facing risks from scams and fraud.

The position has been reflected in a new Joint Statement, which was agreed this week at a meeting of international partners hosted by Ofcom. The need for something like this flows from the fact that many crimes, such as those carried out online or via the phone, often reach across borders from a base in different countries.

The new partnership commits Ofcom, the Federal Communications Commission (US); Innovation, Science, and Economic Development (Canada); the Department of Home Affairs (Australia); and the National Cyber Security Centre (New Zealand) to strengthen cooperation in the telecoms sector and “deter malicious actors and safeguard the integrity of communications infrastructure“.

The move should also complement yesterday’s announcement (here) of new landmark Telecommunications Charter, which was agreed between several of the UK’s leading broadband, mobile and phone providers – pushing for a “crack down on scam calls and fraud“ (BT / EE, Virgin Media / O2, VodafoneThree, Tesco Mobile, TalkTalk, Sky (Sky Broadband) and Comms Council UK).

The commitments:

Enhanced cooperation on network reliability, integrity and security. This will include efforts to prevent the misuse of telecoms resources, such as Global Titles – special numbers used by mobile networks to send and receive signalling messages – while recognising different international contexts.

Information sharing on emerging threats and fraud techniques, such as SMS blasters, and the risks and opportunities arising from the growing use of artificial intelligence in telecoms.

Promotion of best practices in network defence. This can be through cooperation and signposting to international standards, such as those related to Privileged Access Workstations (PAWs), which are dedicated computing arrangements set up for work that requires high levels of security, where appropriate. It will also include more collaboration on supply chain security, including subsea cable infrastructure and radio frequency devices where appropriate.

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Broadband ISP Virgin Media (O2) and network partner nexfibre, which enjoy some of the same parentage, have today announced that they’ve expanded the reach of their symmetric 2Gbps speed full fibre (FTTP) network to add more than 6,000 additional homes in the industrial Cheshire (England) town of Widnes.

The town, which sits in the Borough of Halton, now has almost complete coverage from Virgin Media after the latest expansion. But they’re not the only gigabit broadband network present, with Openreach also covering the town and Grain (Grain Connect) holding a small patch of the area.

Nexfibre reflects a £4.5bn joint venture between Telefónica, Liberty Global and InfraVia Capital Partners (here). This has so far already covered around 2.4 million premises across the UK with their new full fibre network, which is being built by Virgin Media’s engineers. But the operator’s original plan to cover “up to” 7 million UK homes (starting with 5m by 2026) in areas NOT currently served by Virgin Media’s network of 16m+ premises was recently dealt a blow by Telefonica’s strategic review (here).

The network operator currently only expects to reach 2.5 million UK premises by the end of 2025 and uncertainty remains over what comes next. But Virgin Media has recently announced the creation of a new fixed wholesale unit, which will enable retail ISPs to harness both of their FTTP networks (here) – currently available to a combined 7 million UK premises.

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The not-for-profit London Internet Exchange, which handles a large chunk of UK and global data traffic through their switches via around 900+ members (broadband ISPs, mobile and CDN providers etc.), has announced that networks with multiple 100GE ports (lagged ports) will now be able to access new peering bandwidths of 130Gbps and 150Gbps for “increased flexibility and value“.

The change has been introduced after some of LINX’s member networks experienced periods of underutilised capacity, where their port bandwidth demand fluctuates depending on traffic or major online events for example. So, after introducing a 50Gbps “fractional peering service” option at the start of 2025 for those members with 100GE ports, LINX has now taken action to give the same flexibility and value to members with multiple 100GE ports.

The move means that members can now more easily “dial their bandwidth up or down as required“, increasing capacity before and during high network traffic periods and reducing it afterwards.

Mike Hellers, Product Development Manager for LINX, said:

“The introduction of fractional bandwidth services on 10G and 100G ports over the past years has already given our members much more flexibility. We have continued to listen and are now expanding this further by introducing 130Gbps and 150Gbps bandwidth options. The new choices are an ideal step for members to gradually increase their capacity based on their needs.”

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London-focused ISP Vorboss, which has built and operates a 100Gbps speed fibre optic network for businesses in the UK’s capital city, has today announced the launch of a connectivity product that’s “built to enable essential public services across the capital“.

Just to recap. The operator has so far completed the deployment of a 700km long dedicated point-to-point fibre optic network across Central London (covering most of zones 1 and 2), which we’re told is enough to connect all commercial buildings in the area to their direct internet access and Ethernet network. But they’re now looking to offer new solutions to the public sector too.

The provider claims to be fielding a range of options to connect end-points in the public sector. Vorboss is also collaborating with Vitrifi on all this, which has deployed key components of its networking platform, on PON-based solutions as part of the launch.

The product enables councils, transport authorities, and service integrators to connect and manage thousands of devices, from real-time traffic cameras, CCTV, small cells, and environmental sensors to IoT-connected street furniture, all with “enterprise-grade resilience and low latency“.

Jason O’Malley, CCO of Vorboss, said:

“We have been listening to local government organisations over the last year as they explain their difficulty in finding cost-effective, reliable solutions to connecting machines across their boroughs. Through a lot of consultation and innovation we have been able to create a fibre-based solution that is reliable and can be installed quickly.

With this launch, we’re extending the power of the Vorboss network to enable local authorities and service providers to make cities safer, and more efficient.”

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Eastbourne-based broadband ISP Lightning Fibre, which is building a new multi-gigabit speed full fibre (FTTP) broadband network across parts of Sussex + Kent in England (140,000 premises) and also holds a partnership to harness CityFibre’s wider UK network (here), has today launched a new range of business packages via the CF side of their service (off-net).

The announcement doesn’t provide any details or pricing information about the new packages, except to state that low-latency multi-gigabit speeds will be available across CityFibre’s growing full fibre network coverage of 4.6 million UK premises. But we assume the packages shown on their website may also be roughly reflective of the CityFibre based service, even if pricing may differ.

“CityFibre’s reach and technology are a perfect match for our mission to connect more businesses with high-performance broadband and award-winning customer service,” said Rob Reaks, CCO at Lightning Fibre. “This partnership allows us to scale beyond our own physical network regionally, and indeed nationally, while maintaining our commitment to quality and service.”

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The CEO of network access provider Openreach (BT), Clive Selley, has warned Ofcom and the UK Government that he is “going to hold fire” on seeking approval for the final phase of the operator’s plan to deploy full fibre (FTTP) based broadband ISP technology to 30 million premises. At least until the regulator and tax environment show themselves to be favourable.

At present Openreach is investing up to £15bn to expand the coverage of their new “full fibre” network to 25 million premises by December 2026 (here), which will include around 6.2m in rural or semi-rural areas. In addition, they’ve long expressed an ambition to reach “up to” 30m by 2030 (there are c.33m in the UK), which is often said to be partly dependent upon a favourable outcome from Ofcom’s next Telecoms Access Review 2026 (TAR) and government policy (planning and taxation etc.).

However, the news has recently been full of stories from senior figures at BT (as well as rivals like Virgin Media), most of whom have been complaining about the threat from a huge rise in business rates potentially impacting their plans (here and here). In response, Openreach’s boss also seems to now be warning that this, when combined with Ofcom potentially choosing not to soften their regulation enough (i.e. to reflect an increase in market competition), could result in the operator having to shelve or scale-back their plans for reaching 30m premises.

Clive Selley, Openreach CEO, said (FT):

“I’m going to hold fire getting approvals for that final 5mn tranche [of homes] until I see what comes out of the TAR.

If I can’t see where the regulation is going to land then I can’t articulate the business case [internally] and therefore that business case goes on hold until we see the final wording.

These are worrying times for the UK because, as the only credible builder for the last tranche of homes … it’s incumbent on us to keep the programme going”

No doubt some of Openreach’s rivals in the alternative network space, which would very much welcome the operator’s surrender of their build targets and retreating from costly rural deployments, may take exception to the incumbent describing themselves as “the only credible builder” for such premises. But in fairness they are the only large-scale builder in rural areas, with others like B4RN, Gigaclear, GoFibre, Quickline etc. tending to operate at a much smaller scale.

The risk for Openreach and BT, as hinted above, is that any weakening of their ambitions might risk leaving them at more of a competitive disadvantage in those rural areas. On the other hand, most of their rivals in the alternative network space are currently under heavy pressure from wider economic conditions (i.e. they may lack the ability to pick up the slack), particularly given how many of them have had to slow or stop their own builds.

As usual, there is a difficult balance act to be performed. The government needs to generate more money to fill holes in its next budget, while Ofcom has to consider the many vested interests of different market players and network operators have to figure out how they can continue building or pay investors back, without such projects becoming unviable (some may already be at risk of this).

Finally, it’s worth remembering that Clive Selley is technically not saying anything new, since Openreach have always pegged their plans for reaching “up to” 30m premises with FTTP on a favourable outcome from the TAR. But that was before the threat of much higher business rates entered the room, which adds another challenge.

The government have already had to put their Project Gigabit target – for reaching 99% of the UK with gigabit broadband – back from 2030 to 2032, but it’s now not impossible that this may end up having to be put back even further if they aren’t careful.

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Spanish telecoms giant Telefónica, which forms part of the joint venture that controls broadband and mobile operators Virgin Media and O2 UK, has today announced the outcome of their recent Strategic Review and set out the six pillars underpinning their new five-year strategic plan. This includes consolidation and retaining the UK as one of their core markets.

In case anybody has forgotten. Telefonica and Liberty Global control VMO2 in the UK as part of a 50/50 joint venture. On top of that, Telefonica also hold a 25% stake in complementary broadband network nexfibre, alongside Liberty Global, with both companies sharing the other 50% of the £4.5bn joint venture, which is owned by the private equity firm InfraVia Capital Partners.

At the start of 2025 everything appeared to be progressing normally and nexfibre was on their way to reaching 5 million premises by the end of 2026. However, as previously reported (here), the nexfibre build suffered a big hit in the spring after debt stricken JV partner Telefonica launched a Strategic Review.

The review caused Virgin Media to take a different approach to opening up their existing broadband network to wholesale (here) and also appeared to stall nexfibre’s roll-out; the planned deployment for 2025 was scaled back from 3 to 2.5 million premises and the roll-out beyond this has been placed into uncertainty.

More recently, the CEO of Telefónica, Marc Murtra, has indicated that he viewed growing scale through buying telecom assets (consolidation and control) as part of his thinking for the future. One such option proposed in the media could even see Telefonica make a play for Liberty Global’s 50% stake in Virgin Media or do something similar with nexfibre. But to do that would require fresh capital, which is not an easy proposition in today’s market. Equally, the operator could support a joint push to consolidate one of their broadband rivals, such as Netomnia (here), which would come with a few caveats.

What’s in Telefonica’s 5-year plan?

The plan doesn’t spell out precisely what Telefonica intends to do in the UK in terms of consolidation, but it does confirm that they will remain focused on the country as one of their “core markets” alongside Spain, Germany, and Brazil — aimed at positioning the operator as a “world-class European telco with profitable scale“.

The plan then talks about adopting a simplified operating model, before acknowledging that investment in the wider telecoms market has been “inefficient due to the operators’ lack of scale when compared to the US and Chinese markets“.

“While it does not include consolidation opportunities, the plan means that Telefónica will be fully prepared to seize any that may arise to create value for shareholders,” said the announcement. On this point there’s some talk about “seizing opportunities in the UK” and the company estimates that a “potential consolidation within its core markets could generate synergies worth between €18–22 billion“. So clearly there’s a consolidation mindset at play.

Telefonica’s Six Pillars (Europe)

➤ Deliver the best in-class customer experience, Telefónica will enhance network performance and customer care across all channels. Service excellence and customer experience are key, and the company plans significant investment in Artificial Intelligence to strengthen both.

➤ Expand the B2C offering, the company will reinforce convergence in Spain and Brazil, expand it in the UK and Germany, and boost ecosystem services to grow B2C revenues and household presence. Telefónica will accelerate both convergence and the digital ecosystem — two key growth drivers.

➤ Scale the B2B and public administration business, Telefónica aims to modernise communication services in Spain and Brazil, seize opportunities in the UK and Germany, and accelerate growth in digital services by leveraging Telefónica Tech, Global Business Units, and local partnerships with companies and sales channels.

➤ Evolve its technological capabilities, the company will invest in fixed and mobile networks, upgrade IT systems, and focus innovation on technologies that enhance its product portfolio, performance, and customer value proposition.

➤ Simplify the operating model, Telefónica will evolve towards a simplified Group operating model, granting greater autonomy to countries and global units focused on critical roles and value creation through scale.

➤ Develop talent, the company will attract and retain the very best professionals across all markets and strengthen a culture focused on impact and execution.

The question of what happens next in the UK depends upon how the other half of their joint venture, Virgin Media, responds. At this stage, there’s still a lack of clarity over what will happen with nexfibre’s build into 2026 and beyond, while questions are already buzzing around which network operators the pair might seek to consolidate. Netomnia is already in the frame, albeit perhaps more as a strategic move to counter CityFibre (they also want to do a deal with Netomnia), since the high level of overbuild with Virgin Media would otherwise make such a deal unappetising.

In the meantime, you can watch the full c.2-hour event below, assuming you enjoy listening to marketing speak for that long (unlikely). Still, even with all the soundbites, it’d still be better than spending the same amount of time watching through the last instalment of the Mission Impossible franchise, but each to their own.

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Customers of Sky Glass, which uses your broadband and WiFi connection to stream on-demand video and live TV channels directly to Sky’s own brand TV sets (without a satellite dish), have been informed that if they also took out the £290 dedicated 4K HDR smart camera add-on (Sky Live) then this will shortly become an expensive paper weight.

The Sky Live camera was originally launched in June 2023 (here) – designed exclusively for use with Sky Glass (it magnetically attached to the top of their TV sets) – and included various features, such as video calling via Zoom, noise-cancelling technology to improve audio clarity and group watching (i.e. syncing the show you’re watching with friends/family in another location, while still allowing video chats – max of 12 people on one call).

The device, which used a 12MP (Megapixel) wide-angle 106-degree Field of View (FoV) camera that connected to Sky Glass via both USB-C and HDMI ports, also featured movement sensors to help support video gaming and exercise, as well as auto-framing technology to help follow users around the room.

Sounds good, right? Well, you’d hope so for £290 a pop, although this cost could alternatively be spreading across a 48 or 24-month contract term. But in a somewhat shocking twist for such recent hardware, Sky yesterday began informing customers that Sky Live will “cease to operate on 4th December [2025]“!

Sky UK Statement

From today, 4th November, Sky Live customers will start to be notified that Sky Live will cease to operate on 4th December.

Innovation has always been at the heart of Sky, finding new ways to make the TV experience even better for our customers. Sky Live was part of that journey, and we’re proud of the ambition behind it. It’s given us valuable learnings that are helping to shape the future of our products.

We have, however, made the difficult decision to discontinue it, in order to focus our investment on what matters most to customers. In the past few years, we’ve launched the next generation of Sky Glass TVs in Gen 2 & Air, which we continue to make even smarter through new updates to Sky OS. We have the UK’s fastest broadband speeds from any major provider, and we’ve launched 5 star rated home insurance with Sky Protect.

We understand this news may be disappointing to people who have enjoyed using Sky Live, and we’re sorry about that.

We also know our customers have loved the Sky Live games, and so we’ve invested in bringing more games to Sky Glass & Stream for all customers to enjoy. There’s something for everyone in the family, including the newly released Who Wants to be a Millionaire, arcade games like PacMan, child-friendly games from Teletubbies and Spongebob, as well as card and strategy games like Solitaire and Chess.

The good news, if you can call it that, is Sky aren’t just going to say “we’re sorry about that” and then run off with your money, which might potentially have landed them in some legal hot water with a number of consumer protection rules.

Sky Live customers will thus be “entitled to a refund for the value that they have paid towards their Sky Live device“, this will automatically be sent to the direct debit on their Sky Account or, if they paid in full, the card used to make the purchase within 3 weeks of the 4th November.

Sky are also offering further information and ways to either recycle or return the Sky Live device once this process completes – here. Sadly, Sky doesn’t clarify why they’ve decided to give up on Sky Live so soon after launching it, which is an incredibly unusual thing to do. But we can speculate that its adoption was probably fairly low, and thus the cost of maintaining the surrounding ecosystem may have ceased to make much sense.