Women tighten grip at high of British telecoms business as broadband community Openreach will get feminine boss

The rapid rise of women to the top of the telecoms industry continues with the appointment of Katie Milligan as the new chief executive of BT’s infrastructure arm Openreach.

BT, which also owns the EE network has been led since 2024 by Allison Kirkby. Vodafone also has a woman at the helm – Margherita Della Valle – who has been in post since 2023.

Milligan, 44, who joined BT as a graduate trainee in 2004, replaces Clive Selley, who becomes chief executive of BT International.

In her previous role as Openreach’s deputy chief executive, Milligan has been responsible for a new commercial and pricing strategy. The business has been facing vicious rivalry in the broadband market from the ‘alt-nets’, the 100 or so start-up providers, many funded by private equity. BT’s Openreach network hosts EE, Sky, and Vodafone.

The Ayrshire-born Milligan is at home in the boardroom, but also conversant with every aspect of such complex technologies as the switching-over of telephone exchange systems from old copper networks to fibre.

Driving her efforts is a passionate belief in the massive boost that improved connectivity could bring to workers and households, so growing the economy.

Milligan regards fast broadband as a ‘lifeline’ to companies and communities.

‘We need the country to digitise,’ she said

Thanks to upgrades, Openreach will have extended superfast fibre broadband to 25million homes by the end of this year. Whether the roll-out expands to 30million homes now hangs on the outcome of deliberations with the regulator Ofcom.

BT’s market capitalisation is £19.7billion, following a 35 per cent jump in the shares over the past year.

Openreach, however, is considered to be more valuable than its parent. In a spin-out from BT, the business which employs about 28,000 people, worth could be as much as £30billion. This is based on its desirability to US pension funds requiring a reliable source of income.

Kirkby alluded to the possibility of a sale of Openreach last year. But in the final quarter she opted instead to focus on Openreach’s lower loss of market share to the alt-nets, some of whom are buckling under higher borrowing costs.

Kirkby also reiterated her resolve to ‘squeeze the short sellers’ responding to renewed bets against the share price.

Vodafone’s share price has leapt by 63 per cent over the past year, reflecting that turnaround being executed by Della Valle who presided over last year’s merger with the Three network.

Like Milligan, she is passionate about the need for planning and other support to improve mobile and broadband services – which she regards as crucial to every aspect of working and family life.

A telecoms insider reflected yesterday that the trio of Kirkby, Milligan and Della Valle will represent a lobbying force difficult to ignore – because of their conviction and the expanding scale of the industry.

At present the annual revenues of the telecoms sector are £489 billion. But the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) is forecast to massive increase this total.