Clive Selley - CB Interview

Good morning, Rob. Pleased to talk with you today.

Okay, well, firstly, thank you for the invitation to Connected Britain. Really looking forward to the event, and very proud to represent Openreach at the event. I'm the chief executive of Openreach. I've been in this position for five years now, which is a huge privilege because I'm the guy who gets to be the CEO as we transform Openreach from a copper company to a full fiber company. By background, I am an engineer, so my degree training is engineering. Throughout my career, I've been closely working with the technology platforms in telecoms, either the network platforms or the IT platforms, but I've also had roles to do with managing products and managing professional services teams. And I've worked here in the UK and also in Asia Pacific, when I was based for a couple of years in Bangalore in southern India. So, I'm a telecoms guy, I'm an IT guy by background, and I'm in a very privileged position leading the transformation at the Openreach business.

Well, I left school thinking I want an exciting career, and I was, you know, my strengths at school were in sciences. And I did even at an early age identify that telecoms and IT were two exciting, fast-moving, fast-developing areas of the economy, industries that were changing fast and that were playing an ever bigger role in society. And that's what led me over a fairly short period to take a role in telecoms, and I've not diverted since. I've either within telecoms done IT jobs or product jobs or marketing jobs or network management and evolution jobs. So, I've done everything in telecoms, basically, and it was from that early decision point about trying to find an exciting, fast-changing industry that had a high tech content.

You know, even the phrase Connected Britain means great connectivity, great digital connectivity, which I think leads directly to fantastic outcomes for the country both economically, also societally, and also environmentally. So, it's a massive underpinning of a better Britain, frankly, if we get this right. And I would refer you to some research from the Centre for Economics and Business Research, which says that if we can fully fibre Britain as the whole industry, it will deliver a 59 billion pound boost to the UK's productivity, and that's a per annum impact. It also says that it could bring back nearly a million people into the workplace by offering them the flexibility and opportunity to be part of a bigger company but to be so remotely working from home. And it would also, says the report, enable about half a million people to move away from urban centers. So, Britain is a country where people have been migrating over many years to the big urban areas and depopulating our rural areas. This full fiber infrastructure could help reverse that trend and give rise to a more even spread of people across the UK, and I think that contributes big time to the whole leveling up agenda that we talk about in government and in society generally. And then, of course, it's also about the nation going green. So, if we can reduce commuting journeys, as the CEHR research suggests, 230 million less commuting journeys, then that equates to removing 700,000 tons of carbon emissions into the atmosphere every year. So, you know, that's what full fiber, that's what great digital connectivity can do, and Connecting Britain next week is all about coming together to figure out how we're going to get this mission accomplished at speed and deliver these kinds of outcomes.

I think we as an industry have achieved huge forward momentum on the big fiber build for the UK. So, whatever those barriers are, Rob, we are making great progress, that's the first thing to say. But I do think the government can do some things to help. So, let me give you a big example: the electronic communications code is a piece of legislation that's moving through government right now, and we need the reform of the electronic communications code to make it easier for all of us, all the fiber builders in the UK, to get access, particularly to multi-dwelling units, so apartment blocks across the UK. About 15% of the UK population live in apartment blocks, and it can be really tricky getting those way leaves, those legal permissions, to go into those apartment blocks and fiber up the risers across the ceilings in the common hallways. So, I'd love to see reform of the ECC. I'd love to see progress on the government's gigabit project, this is the government assistance for building fibre in the very hardest to reach areas, mostly very rural areas. And good news, I think you've got Paul Norris, who's the CEO for that government project, coming to the Connected Britain conference next week, so we'll be able to debate with him. And then, I think I would encourage us as an industry to look at balanced builds, so building not just in urban and suburban areas where lots of us are doing so right now, but also making sure that we balance our build effort to properly cover rural and even ultra rural communities. This is essential because it drives the leveling up agenda, you know, part of the leveling up agenda is to level up between cities and rural areas, we can help do that if we undertake balanced fiber build.

So, Rob, I think the next big milestones are both near term and medium term. At Openreach, we built around five and a half million homes passed with fibre, and we're accelerating our build program. I think the big milestone for me as one of the providers of full fiber is December 2026, when my target is to have passed 25 million homes and business premises right across the UK, so England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, urban, suburban, rural, everywhere across the UK, 25 million. So, that's a big one. A near-term milestone for me, though, is the reform of the government's electronic communications code, super important. That they give us way leaves, make it easier for us to upgrade the old copper infrastructure in apartment blocks across the UK to full fibre. So, I'd love that milestone to be in early 2022.

So, Rob, I think the most important thing about Connected Britain is that what we're doing is bringing together the entire industry plus wider stakeholders. I know there are government people coming to the conference as well. For me, it's a tremendous, in fact unique, opportunity for us to meet as an industry, to explain to each other what we're doing, to discuss obstacles and hurdles and joint ways of solving problems, and to celebrate the successes that the many industry participants have registered over recent weeks and months. You know, we are making fantastic progress as an industry to transform the digital infrastructure of the UK, and we should be celebrating that. We should be talking about it and sharing those successes and building on those successes and laying a road map for the future benefit of the full UK. So, really looking forward to meeting so many fibre builders, many industry guys who provide the componentry, and also talking with government about how they can remove barriers and just make it easier for us to get this fibre mission completed to the benefit of the whole nation. So, thank you very much, Rob, for the discussion today, and I look forward to seeing you in the flesh, along with hundreds of other industry players, in Islington at the Design Centre next week. It's big on my calendar, really looking forward to it. Thank you very much.