Kirkby joins BT from Swedish operator Telia, just one of the three Scandinavian firms she has helmed in her career, with stints at Tele2 between 2015-2018 and TDC Group between 2018 and 2019.
In the UK Kirkby has served as a non-executive director of BT for four years, and back in 2010 was executive director of finance operations & transformation
Mann says he doesn’t expect Kirkby to deviate too far from Jansen’s strategy, including the continuation of the major full-fibre investment programme from BT’s Openreach unit.
Openreach has achieved about 50% of its target to provide full-fibre technology to 25 million premises by the end of 2026, rolling out to 60,000 new places each week.
“But as well as keeping its foot to the floor on the roll-out of full-fibre networks, BT needs to start getting a return on its huge investment,” Mann said in a blog post. “This could mean that fibre uptake, rather than deployment, is one of the main metrics by which Ms Kirkby will eventually be judged”.
Mann says Kirkby will also be keen to extend EE’s leadership in 5G. Last week EE, BT’s consumer and mobile arm, announced it was ahead of rivals in building the UK’s shared rural network, hitting targets six months ahead of schedule. Population coverage of EE’s 5G network has reached 72% population coverage of the UK.
EE will simultaneously focus on sunsetting its 3G network, which is on track for a March 2024 completion date while BT is tasked with stripping Huawei kit from its network following sanctions on the Chinese vendor. This deadline was missed by BT at the start of the year.
“Another top priority should be to improve BT’s standing in enterprise,” Mann said.
“Here, the operator has long struggled, missing out on opportunities to support businesses’ transformation journeys and being weighed down by the pandemic and stuttering economy.
"[Kirkby] needs to quickly build on the merger of the company’s Global and Enterprise arms in 2022; their coming together aims to create a single nimbler and more focused organisation."
Mann says that other challenges Kirkby will face include BT’s sinking share price and dealing with the job cuts announced by Jansen last year.
“At some point, the new boss may have to contend with a takeover bid,” Mann adds.
However recently, talk of a Deutsche Telekom or Altice takeover has subsided, following Deutsche Telekom CEO Tim Hoettges comment that taking a stake in BT was the company's biggest mistake. Altice is also looking at offloading assets to reduce debt.
