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It has been pressing the Government to ease business rates on new broadband networks by extending a so-called tax “holiday” from five to 20 years.

BT chief executive Philip Jansen has also been urging the regulator Ofcom to give greater certainty after slashing the dividend and pledging £12bn towards the gigabit rollout.

Ofcom chief Melanie Dawes has signalled that wholesale prices on full fibre will not be capped until 2031 at the earliest, but Mr Jansen wants a commitment for 20 years. The watchdog will reveal details about the price cap when it announces its wholesale fixed telecoms market review today.

A favourable deal for BT has the potential to boost the telecoms giant's share price, which has suffered from uncertainty over how much of a return it can make from full-fibre.

BT's shares surged more than 6pc on Wednesday after avoiding a costly bill for 5G airwaves, spending £452m instead of an expected £824m.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/03/17/5bn-broadband-upgrade-aimed-tory-red-wall-constituencies/

Ministers will target Red Wall Tory constituencies with plans for a £5bn gigabit broadband upgrade in rural areas, The Telegraph can reveal.

It is understood the government will announce on Friday how it plans to roll out the rural subsidy amid industry concerns it is moving too slow.

The so-called "Project Gigabit" plan will detail how the money will be distributed across the country - with Northern areas among a number of locations being targeted.

A call for evidence will also form a key plank of the announcement in an attempt to understand the needs of rural communities and businesses, including those in the areas hardest to reach.

The move comes as Ofcom reveals on Thursday the wholesale pricing structure for faster and more reliable full-fibre broadband, which will determine how much broadband builders are willing to invest.

The "Project Gigabit" plan from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport follows concerns highlighted by The Telegraph that the rural rollout was behind schedule. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is understood to have queried with Oliver Dowden, the Culture Secretary, about his department's progress.

Mr Johnson had originally pledged to cover the UK in full-fibre broadband by 2025 ahead of being propelled into Downing Street.

Industry concerns have been building, however, after the government watered down a number of key targets for upgrading the nation's internet connectivity.

In the general election, the promise was changed to a commitment of kitting all homes and businesses with gigabit broadband within five years.

In rural areas deemed too expensive for BT's broadband division Openreach to install, ministers vowed to offer subsidies worth £5bn to ensure they did not miss out.

However, Chancellor Rishi Sunak slashed the spending pledge from £5bn by 2025 to just £1.2bn in a blow to the industry's ambitions.

It came alongside Mr Johnson's less ambitious plan of ensuring just 85pc of the UK had gigabit speed by 2025, rather than the whole country. By breaking promises, Culture select committee chairman Julian Knight said in December that ministers were "marching industry up to the top of the hill, and marching them back down again".

He warned that reneging on commitments was "potentially highly damaging for Government credibility" in 'Red Wall' seats won by the Tory party in the North at the last election.

Pressure on the government has also been intensified by industry calls to to speed up the roll-out by overhauling planning laws and easing the financial burden on telecoms firms.

BT warned in September that broadband targets would be missed by eight years without £9bn in cuts to tax and red tape.

Continues

BT shares surge as mobile operators dodge big 5G bill

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/03/17/bt-shares-surge-mobile-operators-dodge-big-5g-bill/amp/

EE, the UK's biggest mobile operator that is owned by BT, spent £452m on additional 5G spectrum that allows faster smartphone data - far less than the £824m analysts had forecast.

I have read it somewhere that the Ofcom review should come out tomorrow. Whenever it comes out I hope it’s a positive one and after that I would like to see directors buys and share buybacks at this low price. Am I asking too much?

Let’s hope long it may continue this rise.

I don’t know whether there will be a RNS about Ofcom review but I would have thought that there should be something on BT news site.

Velo what are your thoughts about the price action today? Lets hope I don’t jinx it and we end up in red today.

Does anyone think we will get to 52 week high this week?

https://amp.ft.com/content/efa8b170-efb2-4d39-b4a0-3205353cecdd

Part of the article

More critical is the impending Ofcom review of the market, expected this week. This will set the rate of return BT can expect on a £12bn investment in upgrading its network to fibre — a cost almost equivalent to its current market capitalisation — and thus the speed and scope of the project.

The best-case scenario is that Ofcom introduces a regime that allows for a pre-tax return of between 10 and 12 per cent, or higher, and extends a commitment not to introduce price controls on fibre lines beyond 2031. Jansen wants the fibre network to reach 20m homes by the end of the decade.

The review outcome will help clarify the value of Openreach and determine whether a potential stake sale is feasible for BT. A number of top 10 shareholders have pushed for the company to consider such a move to unlock the value of the infrastructure in line with other European telecoms companies, according to bankers.

Simon Lowth, chief financial officer, previously told investors that the BT Pension Scheme could potentially buy a stake of up to £5bn in Openreach and that third parties could invest alongside it.

Such a complex move would reduce the burden of BT’s pension deficit and align the group with other European telecoms companies that are carving out infrastructure assets including towers and fibre networks.

BT’s modernisation has been complicated by Covid-19, which has hit its financial results despite the resilience of its core telephony business. Revenue in the first nine months of the year dropped 7 per cent to £16bn, while pre-tax profit fell 17 per cent to £1.6bn.

With costs reduced, troublesome assets such as its Italian unit sold and consumer price rises levied, BT now needs to prove to investors that it can restore its dividend and sustain this month’s share price rally, said analysts.

If the company clears its strategic hurdles in the coming months, the boardroom noise could prove to be little more than static on the line.

https://amp.ft.com/content/efa8b170-efb2-4d39-b4a0-3205353cecdd

Simon Lowth, chief financial officer, previously told investors that the BT Pension Scheme could potentially buy a stake of up to £5bn in Openreach and that third parties could invest alongside it.

https://news.sky.com/story/amp/5g-spectrum-goes-up-for-auction-as-uk-tries-to-drive-forward-rollout-12243527

https://www.lse.co.uk/news/BT.A/-uk-mobile-spectrum-auction-to-start-on-friday-regulator-says--843w8fw9xldgbqw.html

You hit the nail on the head lol

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2021/03/openreach-to-resume-uk-ultrafast-broadband-installs-next-week.html

Network access provider Openreach (BT) has been informing UK ISPs that new installations for their ultrafast broadband products (FTTP, Gfast and SOGfast), which had previously been delayed to 1st March 2021 onwards, are now set to restart at the later date of Monday 15th March.

Readers may recall that, during early January, Openreach took the difficult decision to once again delay many new provisions of their related products (here), as well as some other services, as part of their response to the UK Government’s latest COVID-19 lockdown.

The move was intended to protect both their engineers and customers from the then still rapidly increasing spread of the virus (i.e. the focus was on limiting work that would usually require an engineer to enter your home) and mirrored similar action from last spring.

Since then the Government has announced a roadmap for ending the current lockdown, which saw the first restrictions being lifted yesterday (e.g. schools returning) – a little later than originally expected – and as a result the operator has also adjusted their own plan to include an additional delay.

In other words, Amber working conditions for new FTTP, G.fast and SOGEA broadband installations will return on 15th March 2021 (i.e. internal provisions and repair work may proceed), while their Fibre and Network Delivery (FND) teams will return to Green status on the same date (no limitations). “In all cases our engineers will continue to carry out a personal risk assessment and maintain the current safety guidelines,” said Openreach to ISPs.

Naturally you can’t add another delay to new provisions without that having a further knock-on impact for those already awaiting an installation to take place. For example, a number of readers have recently been informing ISPreview.co.uk of additional delays to their FTTP installs, although this may vary from place to place.

As a side note, we do wish that Openreach would make updates like this available to the public because ISPs rarely publish such details directly, and it has relevance for consumers.

today in my opinion was a mistake. They should have left it alone and in three days everything would have been forgotten.

Numis had a buy target of £3.40 in May 2019. What has changed so much for them to say sell now and £1.10 price target.

From Ofcom website: We expect to publish our final decision relating to the wholesale fixed telecoms market review by 31 March 2021.

I remember reading somewhere about 18th of March as the date for the above so not long to go.

https://www.bt.com/about/investors/financial-reporting-and-news/latest-consensus

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2021/03/new-uk-law-passed-to-spread-gigabit-broadband-into-big-buildings.html