Latest news with #broadband
Yahoo
35 minutes ago
- Business
- Yahoo
BT to appoint Virgin Media O2's Cobian as CFO, Telegraph reports
(Reuters) -BT Group, Britain's biggest broadband and mobile services provider, is set to name Virgin Media O2's chief financial officer, Patricia Cobian, as its first female finance chief, The Telegraph reported on Wednesday, citing unnamed sources. Cobian held the finance chief position at Telefonica's UK mobile network O2 since 2016, before transitioning to the same role at Virgin Media O2 following the completion of the 50-50 joint venture between Telefonica and Liberty Global in 2021. BT and Virgin Media O2 declined to comment on the report. Sky News reported on Monday that BT was looking for a new finance chief to succeed Simon Lowth, who will retire within a year. He was appointed BT CFO in 2016. Cobian would join BT at a time when it is looking to cut costs through layoffs and advances in artificial intelligence. "Depending on what we learn from AI . . . there may be an opportunity for BT to be even smaller by the end of the decade," Chief Executive Allison Kirkby told Financial Times in June. The company said in 2023 that it planned to cut as many as 55,000 jobs, including contractors, by 2030.
CNA
37 minutes ago
- Business
- CNA
BT to appoint Virgin Media O2's Cobian as CFO, Telegraph reports
BT Group, Britain's biggest broadband and mobile services provider, is set to name Virgin Media O2's chief financial officer, Patricia Cobian, as its first female finance chief, The Telegraph reported on Wednesday, citing unnamed sources. Cobian held the finance chief position at Telefonica's UK mobile network O2 since 2016, before transitioning to the same role at Virgin Media O2 following the completion of the 50-50 joint venture between Telefonica and Liberty Global in 2021. BT and Virgin Media O2 declined to comment on the report. Cobian would join BT at a time when it is looking to cut costs through layoffs and advances in artificial intelligence. "Depending on what we learn from AI . . . there may be an opportunity for BT to be even smaller by the end of the decade," Chief Executive Allison Kirkby told Financial Times in June. The company said in 2023 that it planned to cut as many as 55,000 jobs, including contractors, by 2030.
Reuters
an hour ago
- Business
- Reuters
BT to appoint Virgin Media O2's Cobian as CFO, Telegraph reports
July 23 (Reuters) - BT Group (BT.L), opens new tab, Britain's biggest broadband and mobile services provider, is set to name Virgin Media O2's chief financial officer, Patricia Cobian, as its first female finance chief, The Telegraph reported on Wednesday, citing unnamed sources. Cobian held the finance chief position at Telefonica's UK mobile network O2 since 2016, before transitioning to the same role at Virgin Media O2 following the completion of the 50-50 joint venture between Telefonica ( opens new tab and Liberty Global (LBTYA.O), opens new tab in 2021. BT and Virgin Media O2 declined to comment on the report. Sky News reported on Monday that BT was looking for a new finance chief to succeed Simon Lowth, who will retire within a year. He was appointed BT CFO in 2016. Cobian would join BT at a time when it is looking to cut costs through layoffs and advances in artificial intelligence. "Depending on what we learn from AI . . . there may be an opportunity for BT to be even smaller by the end of the decade," Chief Executive Allison Kirkby told Financial Times in June. The company said in 2023 that it planned to cut as many as 55,000 jobs, including contractors, by 2030.
Phone Arena
2 hours ago
- Business
- Phone Arena
T-Mobile reports record-breaking Q2 earnings and the stock soars
For those thinking that the T-Mobile train is slowing, better guess again. The carrier just reported that it had 830,000 postpaid phone net customer additions during the second quarter. This financial category is considered the gold standard (dare I use the word) metric that Wall Street looks at to determine the underlying strength of wireless firms. It was a record-setting performance for T-Mobile as it added more postpaid phone net customers during any second quarter in T-Mobile 's history, and it led the industry as well. Postpaid net customer additions of 1.7 million were also a second quarter record for T-Mobile , and that performance also led the industry. T-Mobile reported 318,000 postpaid net account additions, up 6% year-over-year best in the industry. The report also mentioned that T-Mobile had 5G broadband net customer additions of 454,000. That was a 12% gain year-over-year and was, repeat after me, the best in the industry. Postpaid churn for the quarter was .90%, a slight improvement from the .91% reported for Q1. T-Mobile reported service revenue of $17.4 billion during the three months, which was up an industry best 6% on an annual basis. What drove the stock much higher after hours was the record net profits of $3.2 billion announced by the company, up a stunning 10% year-over-year. Diluted earnings per share, which assume the conversion of all convertible debt to equity, came in at $2.84. That is up 14% year-over-year and is a record for any second quarter in T-Mobile 's history. The carrier's CEO, Mike Sievert, said, " T-Mobile crushed our own growth records with the best-ever total postpaid and postpaid phone nets in a Q2 in our history. T-Mobile is now America's Best Network. When you combine that with the incredible value that we have always been famous for, it should surprise no one that customers are switching to the Un-carrier at a record pace. These durable advantages enabled us to once again translate customer growth into financial growth, with the industry's best service revenue growth by a wide mile and record Q2 Adjusted Free Cash Flow." T-Mobile also reported that it had 39,000 prepaid net customer additions during Q2. Those customers are a highly fickle group ready to follow the lowest pricing. That's why prepaid churn is typically higher than postpaid churn. For Q2, T-Mobile 's prepaid churn was 2.65%. The company said that for 2025, it expects postpaid net customer additions to be between 6.1 million and 6.4 million. That's an increase from previous guidance calling for 2025 to show an increase between 5.5 million to 6.0 million. This estimate includes a forecast of 2.95 million to 3.10 million postpaid phone net customer additions during 2025. These figures are another reason why the stock took off after the report was released. Speaking of the stock, after closing the regular trading session at $233.93, up 68 cents for the day, in after-hours trading, the shares soared $13.71 or 5.9% higher at $247.64.
CNET
2 hours ago
- Business
- CNET
Gig Speeds for Every American? Trump FCC Moves to Drop One of the Group's Most Ambitious Goals
One of the federal government's most ambitious broadband targets may soon be abandoned. On August 7, the FCC will vote on a proposal to drop its goal of gig speeds for every American. In March last year, the Democratic-led group voted to raise the definition of minimum broadband speeds from 25Mbps download and 3Mbps upload speed to 100/20Mbps. It also set a more ambitious long-term goal of increasing the benchmark to 1,000Mbps download and 500Mbps upload speed. Trump's pick for FCC chair, Brendan Carr, has consistently advocated for a 'technology neutral' approach to broadband subsidies. There's only one broadband technology that can currently reach 1,000/500Mbps, and that's fiber internet. Carr's proposal repeatedly points to the previous, Democrat-led FCC's goals as outside the bounds of Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which requires the FCC to 'encourage the deployment' of telecommunications service 'on a reasonable and timely basis' to all Americans. "Not only is a long-term goal not mentioned in section 706, but maintaining such a goal risks skewing the market by unnecessarily potentially picking technological winners and losers," Carr's plan says. Locating local internet providers While Carr was critical of the increase to the minimum broadband threshold when it passed last year, there is no mention of rolling back the 100/20Mbps requirement. Changes in how we measure broadband progress Another notable departure from the 2024 report is how the FCC could measure broadband deployment going forward. Last year, for example, the Commission determined that 7% of Americans did not have access to 100/20Mbps speeds. Carr's proposal argues that this is a flawed way to measure progress toward closing the digital divide. It all hinges on one key sentence used in Section 706: 'The Commission shall determine whether advanced telecommunications capability is being deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion.' Carr's proposal argues that the FCC has been (wrongly) measuring where broadband has been deployed already, not where it is in the process of being deployed. 'We believe that the prior Report's binary interpretation of the threshold for issuing a passing or failing grade in the ultimate section 706 finding effectively read the 'reasonable and timely' language out of the statute,' Carr's proposal says. 'That interpretation seemingly found anything short of 100% was insufficient to warrant a passing grade and thus disregarded Congress's use of the present progressive tense in 'is being deployed.'' The interpretation of that phrase could have huge repercussions. Section 706 requires that if broadband is not being deployed to all Americans, the FCC must 'accelerate deployment of such capability by removing barriers to infrastructure investment and by promoting competition.' With $42.5 billion in federal funding through the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program currently being deployed to states, the FCC can reasonably argue that broadband is in the process of being deployed to all Americans. If the question was whether all Americans have access to broadband speeds -- as the Democratic-led FCC previously interpreted -- the answer would be a resounding no, and the FCC would be required to take concrete action to achieve that goal. Broadband affordability is no longer an FCC goal It's easy to miss the affordability aspect in Carr's proposal, but it could have far-reaching impacts. It says that the previous FCC read 'several extraneous universal service criteria' into section 706. In a footnote to that sentence, it defines these criteria as 'deployment, adoption, affordability, availability and equitable access.' In last year's report, the FCC determined that, 'The legislative history of section 706 further supports the view that Congress expects us to examine more than physical availability, and explicitly identifies affordability in describing the goals of section 706.' Carr vehemently disagreed with this interpretation, writing in a dissenting statement, 'That cannot be right. For one, those terms appear nowhere in Section 706.' Most broadband experts agree that cost is the main reason people don't have home internet, not a lack of availability. That was borne out when 23 million Americans enrolled in the Affordable Connectivity Program, a federal subsidy to help low-income families pay for internet that expired one year ago. "As folks in this space like to say, if it's not affordable, it's not accessible," Sean Gonsalvez, a director of communication with the advocacy group The Institute for Local Self-Reliance, told me in a previous interview. A 2021 Pew Research Center survey found that one in five people who don't have a broadband subscription cited cost as the main reason -- the highest of any answer and well above the number who said service isn't available. Another study found that "for every American without broadband service available, up to twice as many have service available but still don't subscribe." Even though affordability was outlined as a goal in last year's report, the previous FCC did not make much progress on the issue. Instead, it's been largely left up to states to legislate. In New York, for example, internet providers are required to offer low-income residents plans as low as $15 per month. In mid-December, the Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to the law. One month later, AT&T announced it would be removing access to its AT&T Internet Air service in New York.
