BT CIO Clive Selley becomes Openreach CEO

Selley has been at BT since 1981 and will take over from Joe Garner, who is leaving to become CEO of Nationwide Building Society

BT group CIO Clive Selley has become the new CEO of BT's infrastructure arm Openreach, replacing current CEO Joe Garner, who is leaving to become CEO of Nationwide Building Society.

The handover will take place this quarter.

Alongside his role as group CIO, Selley is also CEO of BT technology, service and operations (TSO) - and is responsible for the company's core networks and IT systems across the world, including TV, mobile and conferencing, as well as its research and development arm at Adastral Park, Suffolk. As CEO of BT TSO, he is responsible for 12,000 staff, 8,000 contractors, and his dual roles mean he has an annual budget of over £2bn per year.

CIOs from BT operations in 170 countries report to Selley: "I have a bunch of CIOs who are the CIOs of each of these businesses, but also work for, say, the CEO of global services, or the CEO of consumer, so they each dual report," he told Computing in an interview last year.

Selley, who was ranked 48 in Computing's IT Leaders 100 list 2015, said he was "honoured" to have been asked to lead Openreach.

The company has been put under the spotlight over the past year, as it could be split from its parent group BT. In July, a discussion paper from regulator Ofcom suggested that BT should separate its networking business from its retail business in order to benefit consumers and create more competition in the market.

Openreach is already meant to run at an "arm's length" from BT's retail business - the part that services business and consumer customers - but rivals have consistently complained that BT Openreach is inefficient and does not install broadband or new lines quickly enough. It is also slow to fix faults, they say. Vodafone has gone as far as to say that BT has been fiddling its broadband installation figures to avoid paying penalties, and called on Ofcom to launch an investigation into the excuses the firm makes when it fails to connect lines on time, am investigation that is ongoing.

Ofcom said that a fully separated Openreach business "would remove BT's underlying incentive to discriminate against competitors", but BT chief executive Gavin Patterson claimed that a forced separation of BT and Openreach could lead to "10 years of litigation and arguments".

In response, Ofcom chief Sharon White said she was not "easily intimidated" by a threat of a 10-year legal battle.

More recently, White told the BBC that the separation of BT and Openreach was just one of four possibilities being considered.