The only upside of Covid for BT is that people realise how much they need us

ON the leadership campaign trail in June 2019 Boris Johnson said in his usual off the-cuff way that he wanted ultra-fast broadband in every UK home by 2025.

For watchers of BT what happened next was striking. New CEO Philip Jansen responded: “We’re up for it.”

The old BT would have mumbled about costs, shareholder value and privately complained that it was being set up to fail. It was a defensive business with a decent number of things about which to be defensive.

Jansen wants to change all that and in some ways already has.

The new HQ just open, One Braham in Aldgate, have a very different feel to the old one in St Paul’s.

The new building is, like its surroundings, diverse and unstuffy. The location is both a sign of the City moving East and a vote of confidence in London.

Some stats: the 18-storey One Braham has 85 digital spaces and 200 meeting rooms; 450 cycle bays, shower and changing facilities to encourage staff to cycle and run to work.

During the refit, 99% of the waste generated was recycled rather than sent to landfill. All good stuff.

Did the Boris thing work, I ask Jansen. “I hope so. Conceptually BT has been on the back foot for ages. We’d been declining for five or six years. When I arrived I decided to lean forward a bit. We have to convert that into success in the marketplace.”