Gavin Patterson, chief executive at BT Group is to step down from his role later this year. The board has begun to the recruitment process for Patterson’s successor, whom the company says is expected to be in place during the second half of 2018. Until then Patterson will remain in the role.

In a statement, chairman, Jan du Plessis said: ‘Gavin has been with BT for just over 14 years and I want to thank him for his contribution to our business during that time, in particular during the almost five years that he has served as chief executive.

As part of its re-launched consumer strategy, BT has revealed a number of proposed products and services across BT Consumer brands, including EE and Plusnet.

BT has set out its latest strategy update as part of the incumbent’s full year results for 2017-2018. Revealed in the update is the intention to increase its FTTP and mobile infrastructure investment within an annual capex allocation of around £3.7 billion.

UK communications regulator, Ofcom has decided not to introduce a restricted dark fibre remedy for the period up to March 2019. The regulator consulted on proposals to introduce a restricted dark fibre remedy for leased line services at and below 1Gb/s until March 2019 last November, following a judgment by the Competition Appeal Tribunal.

UK communications regulator, Ofcom has published a set of measures that aim to increase investment in full fibre broadband networks and lower the upfront building costs. The draft has been submitted to the European Commission for comment, and a final statement is due to be published in March 2018.

ADVA Optical Networking will host a joint demonstration with BT to showcase end-to-end, multi-layer transport network slicing and assurance.

One of the UK’s major construction companies, Carillion, has been forced to enter liquidation. The move comes following unsuccessful talks with potential lenders and government to try to rescue the business, which provides services to the defence, education, health and transport sectors. Alongside its partner telent, Carillion is also a supplier to two big name firms in building out broadband.

The UK government recently confirmed its commitment to delivering broadband speeds of at least 10Mb/s by 2020 to everyone, via a regulatory universal service obligation (USO).

BT and Huawei plan to establish a joint research group at the University of Cambridge with £25 million in funding and contributions over the next five years.

The collaboration will bring together ‘five to ten’ researchers – from BT Labs, the Huawei R&D Team and academics from the University of Cambridge – to explore new communications technologies that have the potential to unlock economic benefits for UK businesses and organisations.

BT has announced a £20 million investment to accelerate the expansion of its ultrafast broadband network to towns across Northern Ireland, reaching a further 140,000 premises.

The roll-out, which is scheduled to be completed by March 2019, will predominantly involve the deployment of fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) technology, the operator said.

Under current programmes, 25 per cent of homes and businesses in Northern Ireland are scheduled to have access to ultrafast broadband, defined as speeds of 100Mb/s and above, by this time.