back to article Openreach boss quits BT in midst of split uncertainty

BT's Openreach chief Joe Garner has quit the telecoms giant during a deeply unsettling time for the firm's infrastructure division. Calls for Openreach to be divorced from the one-time state monopoly have been intensifying in recent weeks as UK communications regulator Ofcom mulls such a split. BT has not yet lined up a …

  1. Ragarath

    Superfast? Really?

    "Openreach is now poised to take the UK from a superfast to an ultrafast nation and I am confident it can achieve this as part of the BT family," he added.

    Ultrafast? What's that then 2.5mbps or the 2mbps that I currently get? Perhaps they should walk before they try running.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Oh a Banker has been running Openreach, that explains everything.

    1. auburnman

      Only for a couple of years. Interesting though that he jumped ship from banking around about the time it was a tough climate, and now banking appears to have weathered the storm and Openreach appear headed for choppy waters he's slunk back to banking...

      1. Peter X

        He's one of them there fair weather CEOs.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Openreacharound

      1. hplasm
        Devil

        Openreacharound

        Opencrotch.

  3. Crisp

    Ultrafast?

    Like Sweden had ten years ago?

    I can't wait!

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Trollface

    Probably told he wasn't getting any stock options in a future IPO so cleared off.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I think he'll make more money financing those options, don't you?

    2. Roland6 Silver badge

      Given the man was at HSBC for ten years, he had probably become a little institutionalised. He most probably had decided to get out of HSBC, and the BT opportunity seemed like a good idea at the time. Subsequently he has discovered that he doesn't have the skills and ability to cut it outside of the banking sector...

      From observations of other similar cases, I would not expect to see Garner changing jobs for a good few years unless events at Nationwide force him out.

      1. Blitheringeejit
        Meh

        Mutual benefit

        IIRC Nationwide is a mutual. It would be interesting to see if that means he can get away with writing himself bigger bonus cheques while being overseen only by members, rather than by shareholders - if anything relating to bankers was in any way interesting, which it definitely isn't.

  5. Vince

    Maybe he got as fed up waiting for his phone to be installed in his office and eventually gave up all hope as we all do.

    Or perhaps he looked at his diary and realised he had a large number of appointments for engineers but that they're all unable to actually do the install because nobody has done the first part of the job to build him a desk.

  6. dcluley

    My daughter in Derbyshire only gets a quarter of a megabyte per sec on her landline. BT actually refused to install ADSL and she had to go to Sky who agreed to do it.

    Yes - ultrafast it is not.

    1. Vince

      Ah that'll be helping BT keep those Ofcom required "average" speed figures high so they look better than competitors. Not that I'm suggesting BT would do such a thing of course.

  7. 99-M
    FAIL

    No new account for 3 months then

    Oh god, it's taken 3 months and counting to get fibre and a line installed by openreach.. now I won't be able to open a bank account within 3 months and will have cancelled appointments that I'm not told about until after the time slot....

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The future

    of openreach depends on what they offer the govt and GCHQ.

    I'm certain they will play the BT old state monopoly on the side of Govt ploy along we're better placed as one organisation to ensure the flow of data as the largest consumer and business data/phone/mobile business and infrastructure provider to other ISPs.

  9. adam payne
    FAIL

    “In my view, it is BT’s investment that has helped the UK to become one of the strongest digital economies in the world and I am proud to have contributed," Garner said.

    BT's investment that is continuously propped up by the taxpayer.

    "Openreach is now poised to take the UK from a superfast to an ultrafast nation and I am confident it can achieve this as part of the BT family," he added.

    Superfast what a joke. I know people that can't get anything over half meg.

  10. Halfmad

    Superfast, Ultrafast, Megafast next?

    I'd be happy with faster and more reliable than the **** we've been force fed for years. I still can't get cable, there still is no real competition in the market - that's the main problem, not the speed but the lack of competitors for Openreach and BT.

    The entire thing needs to be opened up.

  11. AndrewDu

    "Openreach is now poised to take the UK from a superfast to an ultrafast nation"

    Feh.

    I'd like to see him log on to his email from my house any evening after 6pm.

    The connection is so slow that the speed-checkers won't even load. When they do, and you get 1Mb/s shown, that's a good day.

    "OpenReach, holding back the UK since 2006"

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