The infrastructure arm of BT Group PLC (LSE:BT.A) has complained that it is being held back in the roll-out of its full fibre broadband by a lack of staff.
Openreach said it needs more state support and subsidies in order to get near the government's target of connecting almost all UK homes to superfast broadband by the end of the decade.
The company’s boss, Clive Selley, told the FT that it was proving too difficult to hire skilled workers from the EU after Brexit, which was “constraining the rate of fibre build”.
Around 7.2mln homes and businesses had access and 1.8mln were connected to its Ultrafast full fibre broadband as of BT’s latest results, with this number now said to be nearer 7.6mln.
Previous estimates suggested that the full rollout should be completed by the end of 2026, with BT investing £12bn.
Installation for each premises has so far cost between £250 and £350, with 25mln total premises targeted.
With the government having tweaked its target for all but 1% of homes to be connected by 2030, Selley said making fibre connections available to 97% of homes was “achievable” by that time only if the government increased the level of support and subsidies.
At the start of this month, analyst Robert Grindle at Deutsche Bank suggested investors ‘sell’ the shares based on his chief concern about rival broadband networks eating away at Openreach’s network.
Fibre build by “alt-net” companies doubled in 2021 compared 2020 and is “likely to do so again in 2022”.
While the recent impact for BT has been “modest”, the loss of wholesale customers “will likely increase with a potential knock-on impact” on BT’s consumer and enterprise arms.
“We continue to see risk from the alt-nets and whilst we are one-year further down the line with regard Openreach's FTTH deployment, alt-net build is now running ahead of BT's and VMO2 and Vodafone are increasingly ambitious in both B2B and B2C.