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LONDON, Jan 30 (Reuters) - BT said Britain's decision
to limit Huawei's role in building 5G and fibre
networks would increase the cost of its gigabit-communications
plan by about 500 million pounds ($657 million) over five years.
Philip Jansen, chief executive of Britain's biggest
broadband and mobile provider, said he welcomed the clarity
around the use of vendors such as Huawei, a long-standing BT
partner.
"(We) agree that the priority should be the security of the
UK's communications infrastructure," he said in a third-quarter
trading update on Thursday.
"We are in the process of reviewing the guidance in detail
to determine the full impact on our plans and at this time
estimate an impact of around 500 million pounds over the next 5
years."
BT reported a worse-than-expected 3% drop in third-quarter
revenue to 5.78 billion pounds ($7.6 billion), saying it was
impacted by regulation, competition and legacy product declines.
Core earnings were also below market forecasts, down 4% to
1.98 billion pounds, which the company blamed on the fall in
revenue, higher spectrum fees, investment in customer experience
and higher operating costs in its networks arm Openreach.
Analysts were expecting the company to report total group
revenue of 5.83 billion pounds and core earnings of 1.995
billion pounds, according to a company-supplied consensus.
BT said it remained on track for the year, although its free
cash flow would be in the lower half of its 1.9 billion to 2.1
billion guidance range.
($1 = 0.7608 pounds)
(Reporting by Paul Sandle; editing by James Davey)
