Sweden: BT's new CEO Allison Kirkby calls for telecoms infrastructure improvement

BT's new CEO Allison Kirkby this week called for the UK to improve its existing telecoms infrastructure. Kirkby, who joined the company earlier this year from Swedish telco Telia, also said that the Nordics is "way ahead" of the UK in telecoms infrastructure.

"What I would say is Scandinavia is way ahead of the UK. Part of that is very much driven by the regulatory environment, the planning environment, and the general adoption of digital skills and digital services," said Kirkby this week at a Deloitte and Enders media and telecoms conference in London.

“We need to look at planning,” she said. “It’s not necessarily market structure that stops the UK having the great networks that I saw in Sweden – a lot of it is restricted by planning. The Swedes, the Norwegians, the Finnish all expected their highways, their trains, to have great connectivity wherever you were, even when you were up in the northern part of the country. A lot of what is not working in the UK is the planning legislation.”