Member Info for fleccy

"Now that the market has somewhat regained composure, and BT price is roughly where it was previously before COVID, they may restart it next year."

If that's the case, then it'd coincide with the end of the super-deduction period. As far as the price dropping, I don't think that'd stop BT offering a sharesave scheme. I've been in a situation where I applied for the maximum monthly amount in a sharesave scheme many years ago, but the company share price dropped dramatically approaching the start of the scheme, so the company advised the scheme was oversubscribed and scaled back monthly amounts to half of the requested value; In my case I'd applied for £250 a month, and it was scaled back to £125 a month. I believe companies only have so many shares available for schemes, so scale back when they're oversubscribed.
The Super-Deduction period would make some sense for explaing the suspension, since it does affect corporation tax and cancelling employee share plans may free up capital for investment in Fibre/5G Infrastructure/Plant, covered by the super deduction tax relief.

"An Evening Standard news article today which begs the question why did BT stop their Scheme last year after 35 years or so ? Said they cant afford to offer it to the staff anymore!!"

I've tried to find information relating to BT stopping their Employee share schemes; I've looked for information relating to sharesave schemes, and share incentive plans, without success. Does anyone have any links relating to BT's Employee share plans being stopped and why?
I highly doubt it's because BT can't afford it, and more likely related to HMRC company tax incentives, or possibly other Employee incentives like issuing free bonus shares.
In relation to sharesave schemes, Employers can apparently claim corporation tax relief on the difference between the market value of the shares at the date of exercise and the exercise price, could the sharesave/incentive plans have been suspended for an external reason? Possibly something like Super Deduction complicating future corporation tax relief. on schemes starting in the Super-Deduction period between 1 April 2021 until 31 March 2023?

"The 130% super-deduction and 50% first-year allowance are generous brand new capital allowances for investments in plant and machinery assets. Both will allow investing companies to lower their corporation tax bills."

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/967202/Super_deduction_factsheet.pdf

I have no understanding of how companies benefit from such schemes, so all of the above is purely speculative, but I'd be interested to read the view of someone more knowledgeable.

"I think you underestimate the hacking capabilities of foreign powers. They don't need to own BT to get access to their data. They simply plant someone into the company or hack their way into the systems they want to know about."

You could say the same about any Government with enough resource, time, and inclination, and it works both ways. I don't imagine it's as simple as drama's like The Undeclared War make it seem. Drama's are scripted, the real world isn't, so it isn't as simple as just planting someone, or coercing current employee's, or hacking highly secure systems. You'll get the occasional individual, like Edward Snowden, but they are few and far between.

"If BT are responsible for GB security god help us. The network is not secure and never has been"

That doesn't mean it's easy to intercept Data and calls unless you have full access to infrastructure and logins, etc. It would be against the law, but a Network owner could potentially:

intercept optical data using Fibre splitters, optical cross connects, or within the terminating equipment.
Intercept Cloud data with configuration on Switches and Routers.
For now, intercept PSTN calls with scripts on the PSTN Exchanges.
Recover PSTN call data, for calling and called numbers, even if the calling party witholds their number.
Etc. etc, etc

Nothing is completely secure, which explains why Governments require a level of control over their national Telecom providers. I'd be very surprised if the Government allowed BT to go into foreign ownership.

"BT sold Yellow pages, but still couldn't manage to clear the pension deficit, but in the good days, gave everything to share holders and pocketed the rest. BT will be another Woolworth, if they don't change with time."

Does anyone actually use Yellow pages anymore? I go online for whatever I'm looking for.
Woolworth was a retailer, BT is a communication provider. You should read back through the last couple of years of posts, where BT's current and ongoing changes are discussed in detail.

"Every little rally in the sp is quickly knocked back. £1.50s tomorrow??"

It isn't Guru knowledge to predict that, since 5.39p will automatically be knocked off the price at the open.

"It's all far too comfortable for Jansen, and that 's why he doesn't feel the need to deliver."

But he is delivering; The FTTP/5G rollout is accelerating, they're ahead of schedule on the cost savings, and the strategy is heading in the right direction, also ahead of schedule. BT sport has gone, it's spun off into a different company, and Warner will eventually buy out BT completely.
Jansen has to balance OFCOM, competition, litigation, strategy, etc. It's accepted that BT CEO is amongst the hardest CEO positions in the UK, personally I think he's doing a really good job.

"1. Footballers completely different job and industry to telecoms ceo
2. Footballers mostly ‘work hard’ to be at the top on decent wages, and talent is a key factor that doesn’t apply in usual jobs. Footballers mostly work hard in their context. there are plenty with talent who don’t make it or reach their potential.

2. Dave ward earns £100k and £40k combined pension and bonus contributions which is a fraction of Jansen."

To deal with some of your points, the Top Footballers wouldn't perform without the rest of the team behind them, and many of their team mates will earn a fraction of what they earn.
Forget about Footballers, what about Football Managers?
"Pep Guardiola - Manchester City | €1.89m per month"

Many football managers earn more than Jansen.

The same industry argument is a fake narrative too, as CEO's don't use the same tools as the average employee working under them. In the city I imagine some fund managers earn more than CEO's. There are loads of examples of jobs that pay more than Company CEO roles, probably with less work and much less responsibility.

Dave Ward's job is likely a lot easier than Jansen's, with a lot less responsibility.

"Treat the BT workers the same as the board treat themselves and there would be no more strikes."

This socialist ethos about distribution of wealth, treating everyone the same, and comparing the differences between bosses and the average worker is pointless. Someone like Jansen are visible, and arguably have a lot of responsibility to ensure the business succeeds, protecting the jobs under their responsibility. Like Footballers, bosses who don't perform are thrown out with the rubbish. Why is it that Unions have issue with what hard working CEO's earn, but you never hear anything about a Footballer's earnings?

https://squaremile.com/sport/five-highest-paid-football-players-2022/

The highest paid Fooballer in the World, "KYLIAN MBAPPE (PSG) - $62 MILLION/YEAR", earns far more than Jansen, and is arguably relying on natural talent, not hard work and responsibility; In fact many of the World's top Footballers earn far more than Jansen, so this Union narrative about what bosses earn is irrelevant, and false in my opinion. If it was that easy to compare one job with another, no doubt communism would have worked which it clearly hasn't. Why is Dave Ward,General Secretary of the CWU, on a lot more money than an admin worker at the CWU, he would probably argue it's because he has more responsibility and is more visible.
Comparing the bosses to the average worker is just a fake narrative, and should be called out as such. When someone wins the lottery, why should they get all the money? Why not distribute it to everyone in the road, even the one's who didn't bother to buy a ticket themselves? I think I've made my point.

"I’m not sure engineers will be that bothered about their stats any longer as most of them are pretty much out of a job in 3-4 years anyway."

The PSTN switch guys, who are nearing retirement and not interested in re-skilling maybe, but you'll still need Network transmission Engineers who know how to fault find DWDM and ODF's. All the coax and DDF's will go, as will any old legacy services at end of life. You'll still need jumper runners for Fibre patching at sites, field staff for a variety of Business customer facing roles, and Engineers to look after the access network. The jobs will reduce by a lot, but a lot of jobs will still exist after the FTTP/5G is completed.

"A work to rule creating a huge job stack and unlimited overtime will cost the company money as they have to pay circa 50% more just to clear the BAU work I’d have thought and jobs failing will affect the performance levels with OFCOM and BT could face fines if they don’t hit minimum service levels."

I'm not sure how someone would work to rule without affecting their own performance stats, which would likely make them the first out of the door if redundancies come around; It isn't just that though, it wears a person down when they intentionally go slow on a job, at least it would me; Most people want to put their best effort into their work, it's about personal pride. Do BT/Openreach operate an on-call rota these days, or do they rely on phoning around team members to see who's available to go out? When I was on call it was part of a rota, and I received a monthly allownace on top of any overtime I did to ensure availability.

"100,000 minus 58,000 = 42,000"

Well done, you know how to do subtractions, are you now going to demonstrate your A, B, C's? Shame you know nothing about Telecoms.

"I’ve seen him confuse basic things like quantisation"

Quantisation using CODEC's was one of the first things I learnt in Digital Transmission over 30 years ago, no confusion here. MAC addressing is fundamentally a hardware Layer 2 addressing scheme, used by Arp tables of Layer 3 devices to map IP addresses to a physical address. MAC addresses can be spoofed, so aren't reliable for securing devices over the internet, which is why other VPN enabled software using such things as SECURID, or other secure logins are used to validate the user. You could use MAC addressing on a secure internal network, but that is about recognising a device, not securing it.

"To make it clear, I don’t put out incorrect information . So my experience is not of your concern."

From your last post you answered the question anyway, clearly you know little, or nothing, about Telecoms. You're probably only posting on here to air your political views, it wouldn't suprise me if you have no telecom experience at all.

"I don’t wish to disclose my experience. It is clearly more than yours, which is based on ‘assumptions without checking it out"

The reason you wont disclose your experience is because you probably know little about Telecoms, and it'll become evident if the conversation gets technical. I worked in the Telecom industry for over 30 years, first as a field engineer, and the last 10 years working in Submarine cable and Network operations (NOC role). If you want to talk shop, I'm happy to oblige.

"Fleccy can you comment on your slight miscalculation in the number of workers between 100,000 and 58,000?"

Yeah I made an assumption without checking it out, but it likely makes little difference to the pay increase across the board, as many of the internal support roles are likely higher grade anyway.

Can you tell me what your experience in Telecoms is? So that I know you know what you're talking about.

"I read your posts and you enjoy talking as though you know your stuff when in fact you are completely clueless"

So I take it you know everything there is to know about Telecoms AbjectPerformer? Tell me, what's your background and experience that makes you say I'm clueless?

"Fleccy - I keep telling you detail matters. The £1500 pay rise was only for “front line” workers"

Ok I'll concede that, around 58,000 frontline workers. I'm not going to bother finding out what managers, internal I.T. support staff, HR, Admin/billing staff, planners, etc received, but I'm willing to bet it was as good as the frontline worker pay award.

"58% of profit went to shareholders while only 5% went to a pay rise. Over 10 times more so who's being greedy. How much more do you need for God sake."

BT's FY22 total wage bill was £3.746 Billion, with total staff costs of £4.845 Billion. The pay increase was £1500 across the board, and approximately 104,000 staff worldwide, with 96,000 in the UK. Rounding to 100,000 staff, the wage increase amounts £150,000,000, with profit after tax of £1.274 Billion, so the wage increase amounts to 11.77% of FY22 after tax profits.
Can you explain where you get 5% from, since I don't see that. Your comparison in relation to the dividend looks well out too.

"it appears that BT are taking on unskilled workers in bulk, is that to keep wages down and if you have no basic skills level (see Entry Level Frames ads) how many will subsequently be rejected, HR is a different concept to shop floor, how many trainers will all these need. 10 years a bit hopeful."

Much will depend on how BT structure their workforce, many will start out in trainee/apprentice grades which would probably suit the Government. As far as age discrimination, I'm not sure that applies to trainee roles.
BT would initially have to ensure the trainee's know how to find their way around the network, understanding labelling standards, use of databases, etc; Engineers on the access network would also likely learn to use OTDR's, splicers, and basic commissioning of ONT's/OLT's maybe.
The most skilled jobs are in the Network Operations Centre's (NOC's). where they Fault find and instruct Engineers on card changes to restore Service or Network Diversity. Most of the modern equipments are software managed, with remote diagnostics doing a reasonably good job of identifying a faulty card, but sometimes faults aren't obvious so there are tech support staff, who should know more, available through escalation processes.
I'd guess the young trainee's, just starting out, will have good opportunities for career progression if that's what they want. PSTN switch Engineers will have to re-train, retire, or take redundancy, as their jobs will cease to exist after 2025.
10 years is easily enough time to train/replace staff, as Field force jobs are mainly card changing these days. You need skilled Data Engineers for dealing with Enterprise customers, using Voip and other applications, but most of the new skill sets required are already out there, for all roles. At the end of all this, there's nothing new just more IP/Fibre/DWDM Network, with any old legacy network gone.
I haven't worked for BT, so I'm guessing all of the above.