BT CEO on why telecoms needs “more strikers” | Fortune

As CEO of BT, the Most Highly effective Girls honoree is overseeing one of many greatest infrastructure transformations within the U.Ok., from fiber enlargement to the nation’s shift away from legacy landlines. However she can also be attempting to make a deeply technical enterprise really feel culturally related once more.  

This ambition is what lies behind BT’s rising variety of main sporting partnerships, most just lately with UEFA. For Kirkby, these flagship moments that carry collectively tens of millions of individuals are greater than easy branding workout routines; they’re dwell demonstrations of the facility and reliability of the digital networks underpinning fashionable life.  

“We’ve at all times been the connectivity suppliers,” she says. “From the 2012 Olympics to the Queen’s funeral—these are massive occasions that unite the nation. It’s an effective way to indicate individuals: ‘if a corporation like UEFA trusts them to run protected, safe, resilient connectivity for these large occasions, then I belief them as effectively.’” 

“We’d like extra strikers” 

And elite sports activities have extra to supply than profitable partnerships, additionally they present apt metaphors for enterprise efficiency.  

“I consider nice sports activities outfits each from a person participant viewpoint and from a workforce functionality level,” she says. In BT’s case, the “particular person gamers” are the corporate’s 4 manufacturers: BT, EE, Plusnet and Openreach. As CEO, she should function like a soccer supervisor, deciding the place the workforce needs better funding and the place to tug again. (Once I joke that she is the Gareth Southgate of telecoms, Glasgow-born Kirkby replies that she sees herself extra as an Alex Ferguson). 

“Lately, we’ve most likely over-emphasized funding in EE as a model and £25 billion has gone into the fiber and cellular networks,” she says. “We have comparatively underinvested in BT and within the enterprise phase. Now I’m investing in BT as a model to strengthen these components of my workforce so we will get the very best worth out of the funding we’ve put into the networks and EE.”  

To borrow from the sporting world once more, Kirkby describes the technique thus: “The networks present all of the protection the workforce needs—now we’d like a number of extra strikers to win a number of extra matches.” 

Britain’s digital spine 

The stakes, after all, are a bit increased than these of a soccer match—no matter followers might imagine. Kirkby and BT are chargeable for making the U.Ok.’s digital future potential.  

“We have to be sure that the U.Ok. has the very best quality networks so the nation is powered in the very best method,” says Kirkby. “You possibly can’t evolve technologically and benefit from the progress potential of AI if you happen to don’t have an excellent digital spine.” 

The problem, she says, is that for years there was an excessive amount of focus on competitors and never sufficient incentive to put money into infrastructure. In consequence, Britain’s digital infrastructure is deeply fragmented, with a lot of corporations concerned in its working. “Fragmentation brings resilience danger,” she says. “The international locations with the very best digital infrastructure most likely have three key gamers in fiber and cellular. That’s what the U.Ok. will want over time.”  

And as a telecoms CEO, Kirkby sees her function as far better than merely guaranteeing success for BT. “All of us must take duty for offering essential nationwide infrastructure,” she says. “We’ve got to shift the nation onto modern-day applied sciences.” This contains shutting down the landline phone system by January 2027, but additionally serving to the communities that rely on it to be taught the digital expertise they’ll want sooner or later, from on-line banking to reserving docs’ appointments digitally.  

Doing this implies lobbying for the trade as an entire to pull collectively. “I’m very centered on having a market construction that ensures this elementary infrastructure is effectively invested in and that these taking the chance of funding are getting a good return.” 

Energy, affect, and the lengthy recreation 

This duty is one Kirkby takes very critically, and her method to it affords a transparent cause why her place on this 12 months’s Most Highly effective Girls checklist was so effectively deserved. Relating to being “highly effective,” she says: “It’s essential to present you’re making an influence, which is clearly simpler once you’re in a scale enterprise—notably in telco, I may have loads of destructive influence if I’m not cautious.”  

Up to now, this fear would appear to be utterly with out basis. Since Kirkby took the helm in February 2024, BT’s inventory has greater than doubled and the corporate posted fiscal 12 months 2026 pretax income of roughly $1.9 billion. Nonetheless, she won’t be resting on her laurels. “Affect is one thing you solely construct via delivering on your guarantees, being a thought chief and taking your stakeholders on a journey with you.”   

If Kirkby succeeds, BT will obtain one thing few telecom corporations ever actually handle: changing into not simply a part of the nation’s infrastructure, however of how the nation imagines its future.