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LONDON — Britain’s largest mobile and broadband supplier BT Group on Monday appointed Allison Kirkby to replace Philip Jansen as chief executive, saying the switch would take place toward the end of January 2024 at the latest.
Kirby has previously served as president and CEO of Swedish telecoms provider Telia, with experience at Virgin Media and Denmark’s TDC. She has been a member of the BT Group board for the past four years.
“I’m fully supportive of our strategy and am excited about leading it into its next phase of development, as we grow to support customers, shareholders and the U.K. economy,” Kirby said.
Jansen earlier this month announced he would step down from his role within the next 12 months. He will remain on hand to support the handover until March 2024 before retiring, BT said Monday.
His legacy includes BT’s push to build a national fibre network, offering discounted wholesale fibre pricing to major broadband providers in exchange for shifting customers to the grid. U.K. telecoms regulator Ofcom in May ruled that BT subsidiary Openreach’s Equinox 2 wholesale pricing scheme was allowed.
“Based on the evidence available to us, we don’t consider Openreach’s new pricing discounts to be anti-competitive,” Ofcom said at the time.
“Openreach is now 44% of the way through its full fibre build, and customer demand has continued to grow with a total network take-up rate of 32%,” BT said on Thursday, during its quarterly earnings release for the three-month period to 30 June. It also declared adjusted EBITDA up 5% to £2 billion ($ 2.57 billion), with pre-tax profit of £536 million, up 11%.
