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* Britain's biggest broadband company ready to invest in
fibre
* Government and regulator need to create right conditions
* First-half revenue and earnings in line with expectations
* Shares up 2%
(Recasts, adds CEO comments)
By Paul Sandle
LONDON, Oct 31 (Reuters) - BT urged on Thursday
whichever party wins Britain's election to prioritize broadband
to give the company certainty to invest billions of pounds in an
ambitious plan to roll out fibre connections to every home and
business.
Chief Exeuctive Philip Jansen is recasting BT, the country's
biggest broadband and mobile phone provider, as the national
champion the United Kingdom needs to upgrade communications for
consumers and businesses.
BT is ready to accelerate a fibre broadband roll out that is
already passing a home or business every 26 seconds, but needs
the government and the regulator to create conditions that allow
it to make a fair return, he said.
Political certainty, however, is in short supply with
Britain's exit from the European Union delayed again to January
2020, and the country heading to the polls in six weeks in the
third national election in four years.
The chief executive of regulator Ofcom, which is due to open
a consultation on broadband in December, is also standing down.
"We need every political party to ensure that fibring up the
nation is one of the top priories of the next UK government,
whoever that is," Jansen told reporters after the company
reported its first-half results.
He said Prime Minister Boris Johnson's ambition to roll out
1 gigabit fibre to all of Britain by 2025 would be "extremely
difficult" to achieve, but BT was up to the challenge if it
could make fair and reasonable returns on the investment.
"It would need the regulatory enablers put in stone as
quickly as possible and it will need government to make it a
national mission," he said.
As well as building fibre networks to reach 4 million
premises by 2021 and accelerating its 5G mobile roll-out, BT has
launched products that bundle broadband and mobile, brought its
brand to the high street and is improving customer service.
However, despite increasing demand for data, with a new
instalment of video game Fortnite causing record demand this
month, first-half revenue and earnings were hurt by regulation
and declines in services like traditional phone calls.
BT reported revenue of 11.47 billion pounds ($14.80
billion), down 1%, and adjusted core earnings of 3.92 billion
pounds, down 3%.
BT said it could fund the 25-30 billion pound cost of
building a full fibre network by issuing debt, reallocating
capex, disposing assets and by cutting its dividend.
But it did not make any pre-emptive changes to the dividend
policy on Thursday, declaring an interim payout of 4.62 pence
per share, and said it expected to hold the full-year dividend
unchanged at 15.40 pence. Its shares were up 2% by 1226 GMT.
($1 = 0.7735 pounds)
(Editing by Kate Holton and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
