EE's chief exec Olaf Swantee to step down Soon-to-be-swallowed EE has announced its chief exec Olaf Swantee is stepping down as CEO, ahead its £12.5bn acquisition by BT expected to close in March. Swantee said the move to step down was an "enormously difficult decision" but said he had decided to "pursue new opportunities". He added: "To leave EE is probably the …
I remember briefly having a cellnet contract (an early BT mobile offering, they backed out of mobile and it was spun off & became O2 IIRC)
BT approach to mobile seems to have been totally erratic over the years (various fleeting efforts such as blue) - maybe they should keep EE as loosely coupled as possible in case they follow old habits and decide to (again) divest themselves of mobile in a few years time.
Divesting BT Cellnet and creating mmO2 was to give the shareholders some relief and keep things afloat. It's easy to forget how disastrous things looked back then; BT had monstrous debt following the mobile auctions and its peak valuation was just prior to the dotcom crash.
The idea was to keep all the debt inside the boring company with steady revenues (BT plc) and hive off the mobile arm so it could grow more freely.
You could argue it worked - shares were worth a shade under 83p when mmO2 was spun off and Telefonica later bought it for £2. By comparison, Vodafone's price was (about) 220p when mmO2 was spun off and (about) 175p in Oct 2005 when Telefonica's buy-out was agreed.
[Disclosure: I hold BT shares. So that's the nasty capitalist view.]
BT Flogged Cellnet, under significant pressure from investors and analysts who thought Mobile Comms had reached it's peak.
Then iPhone, and Android, and especially 3G happened a few years later, and the market grew exponentially from there.
Don;t blame BT, Intel fucked this up too flogging it's StrongARM/XScale division to Marvell for a pittance.... and has had next to no monilb/Tab presence (excluding a couple of handsets from Acer/Motorola and Tesco's Hudl 2 and the Samsung Galaxy Tab 3) ever since....and Microsoft and RIM can't get anything right mobile wise these days.
Two companies already with pretty bad rep getting together really is a recipe for disaster.
Looking at how BT (Openreach) have handled the UK fibre broadband rollout I can only guess that any investment in EE infrastructure will be minimal and slow with all the intended money disappearing.
BT are undoubtedly one of the worst companies out there. The way they rip off customers with hidden price increases and huge jumps after the 12 month agreement makes my blood boil. I feel especially sorry for EE CS and Suppert Staff in the UK as those positions will be moved to India within 10 minutes of the takeover.
This should never have been allowed to happen.
I couldn't be happier about this merger.
I despise BT with a passion and truly would love to push a pointy object into Kevin Bacon's face, largely as a result of those stupid EE adverts that invade Cinema screens across the land.
BT's golden touch with all things mobile should ensure that, with a bit of luck, this merger will pull both companies into economic free-fall and neither will be seen again! and what a great start to the New Year that will be!
And the countless thousands that work in Bristol and Hatfield along with all the contractors at Ericsson and Huawei and others. They can't wait for their company to collapse.
If you don't like a company, don't use them. But they are both successful British companies employing thousands here in Blighty, a rare thing these days.
I was made redundant by FT/Orange years ago so I know how crappy that feels.
I don't use them at all, either of them.
Of course I don't want to see 1000s of people get made redundant. I fear you missed the point of original post.
and profitable? do me a favour, BT sucked the life blood out of this country for years, why do you think it was broken up and privatised!? It's only marginally profitable now because Openreach own the whole infrastructure. BT retail however should have died years ago, it's woeful inept as a company.
I used to work for BT, I think I'm entitled to want them to burn.
As for the staff at EE? Sorry I don't want to see them get made redundant either, maybe they should blame their marketing team and not me.
Don't let the door smack you on the arse on the way oot............
Good riddance Olaf.......under your "leadership" here are your best bits...
You managed to destroy 2 good networks and then spread what was left as thin as the butter on a supermarket piece!
You tried to set fire to your remaining customers with dodgy batteries
You made your poor staff answer the phone with "welcome to EE Britains biggest and best network" - your customers were probably calling to beg for a signal box and saying that only pissed them off more....
You still try to rob us all by offering to let us skip the Queue for 50p.....even when there was no queue!
You singlehandedly allowed your customers to suffer the absolute shittiest customer service on the planet, then sat back while tempers exploded and refused to allowyour staff to allow people to leave
You turned your T-Mobile/Orange shops into EE shops, even when there was already an EE shop next door....new signs, new refitted interiors....then a few months later shut the duplicate shops down....no wonder you needed our hard earned cash!
I could go on.......
Olaf, you should have been hounded out the door years ago by a pack of hungry wolves. Wherever you end up next, I pity them! You are a useless idiot with no business sense whatsoever. I'll bet you are leaving before BT give you the punt 'cause as shit as BT is, even they wouldnt suffer your particular brand of magic!
Good riddance!
"Our biggest broadband provider merging with our biggest mobile network just as the two technologies are converging, and no apparent restrictions in place...shurely shome mishtake."
You are obviously completely ignorant, of Ofcom's Undertakings that Openreach have to operate under, giving fair, equal and equivalent network access to Sky, Talk Talk, Vodafone etc... the same access BT Retail/Business have... without fear or favour to anyone... it's why you can never speak to an engineer in Openreach... Ofcom's fault, not BT's.
https://www.btplc.com/Thegroup/RegulatoryandPublicaffairs/Codeofpractice/BTPeople/BTpeople.htm
http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/telecoms/policy/bt-undertakings/
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