A decade that reset the baseline

Tomorrow, Katie Milligan becomes Chief Executive of Openreach, succeeding Clive Selley after a decade that has fundamentally reshaped the UK’s telecoms landscape.

It’s easy to forget just how big that achievement is.

Over the past ten years, Openreach has moved decisively away from copper and built a full fibre network now reaching more than 22 million premises, with 25 million in sight.

That isn’t just a telecoms upgrade. It is one of the largest, most sustained engineering efforts undertaken in Britain in decades.

Streets opened up and put back together. Infrastructure laid at national scale. Teams mobilised year after year with consistency and pace.

Programs of that size rarely hold together as well as this one has.

Clive Selley and his team deserve enormous credit for it. They didn’t just build a network – they changed what delivery at scale looks like in this country.

But as Katie Milligan takes over, the nature of the work changes.

From building to earning

For the past decade, Openreach has been answering a clear, physical question:

How fast can we build?

Everything followed from that. Premises passed. Build rates. Coverage milestones. Tangible progress you could see and measure.

Those were exactly the right measures – for a construction program.

But construction programs come to an end.

And what follows is not simply more of the same at a slower pace. It is a different kind of work entirely.

Now the question becomes:

How well can we make it earn?

Take-up starts to matter more than coverage. Revenue per premises passed matters more than the raw footprint. And the real work shifts to customer migration – moving millions of homes and businesses from copper to fibre in a way that actually works in practice.

That’s not a policy aspiration. It’s a large-scale execution task.

A market that has shifted under its feet

The world around Openreach has changed materially – driven in large part by the emergence of credible wholesale competition.

CityFibre has established the most significant alternative wholesale platform the UK has seen in decades.

Netomnia has expanded at remarkable speed. nexfibre is driving consolidation that could reshape the structure of the market. And Virgin Media O2 brings both infrastructure and an existing customer base into play.

In many streets, Openreach fibre now sits alongside one – or sometimes two – alternatives that simply didn’t exist a decade ago.

The build phase created the platform. The altnets changed the dynamics.

And while consolidation will come, the competitive pressure they introduced is not going away.

Copper retirement: simple on paper, difficult in reality

Then there is copper retirement.

On paper, it sounds straightforward. Fibre is better. Move customers across.

In practice, it is one of the more intricate execution challenges in the sector.

Millions of customers need to be migrated. Many are on legacy services with no clean equivalent. Some are vulnerable. Some are businesses relying on connections that were never designed to be moved.

The sequencing is delicate. The dependencies are real. The regulatory framework set by Ofcom provides structure – but it does not deliver the outcome.

Someone still has to plan it, sequence it, and make it work on the ground.

This isn’t an extension of the build program. It’s a different program altogether – less visible, more sensitive, and far more dependent on getting the details right.

When the question changes

This is the point where organisations can lose momentum.

I’ve seen it more than once.

The dashboards still look impressive. The pride in what has been built is entirely justified. But the organisation is still, in subtle ways, answering last year’s question.

And the new question – commercial performance, customer behaviour, migration sequencing – doesn’t get the same level of focus early enough.

The skills that deliver large-scale construction are not the same as those required to commercialise what has been built.

Now the emphasis shifts. Customer acquisition. Migration. Wholesale dynamics. Competitive positioning. Revenue performance across a footprint that is largely complete.

None of this is beyond Openreach. And Katie Milligan is particularly well placed to lead it – she knows the commercial engine of the business as well as anyone.

But it does require a shift. In focus, in metrics, and sometimes in instinct.

The challenge ahead

Katie Milligan takes on the role from a position of real strength.

She inherits a platform that has been built at national scale – funded, engineered, and largely delivered. That is no small inheritance.

But the value of that platform now depends on what happens next.

Take-up. Migration. Retention. Commercial performance in a market that has become far more competitive.

The construction decade is drawing to a close. The commercialisation decade is beginning.

In simple terms:

The hard part used to be getting fibre past the front door.

The hard part now is getting the customer to choose it – and stay.

The network has been built.

Now it has to earn its keep.

About the author

David Hilliard is founder of Mentor, specialists in strategic program execution.

You can call him on 0118 359 2444 or email david.hilliard@mentoreurope.com.