FROM THE INDUSTRY
You’ve been working behind the scenes in UK broadband for years, yet most people in our sector probably don’t know your story. You went to UCL to study electronic engineering. What happened there? I was one of that lucky generation of government grants to go to university, and no fees to pay! At school, physics was my main subject and so I was able to go to UCL to study Electronic Engineering. While I was there, I had this incredible stroke of luck. In my first lecture on optics, the professor – John Midwinter, who had helped develop optical fibre – got his maths wrong. I pointed it out.
What kinds of products? We launched BT’s first voice over internet product in 1997. We called it “Voice Over BT Internet” – very catchy. It was basically Skype before Skype, though it was over dial-up, so not very good. Unfortunately, I didn’t become a multi-billionaire. And we launched the day the war in Bosnia started, so we got shuffled to the centre pages. This was the very late 1990s. Broadband was just being deployed in the first exchanges, and I had decided it was time for me to move on again. So, before I left BT, I was asked to write a broadband strategy. I heard later that nobody opened it for three months, they were too terrified of my spreadsheets! But it was just one graph showing pay-per-view channel finances and underneath I wrote: “Football will pay.” I gave them a top-level technical requirement of about eight meg per second using VDSL. It took a few years, but they did it. Football certainly did pay. It did in the end. But first, Cable & Wireless headhunted me. That seemed like a great move to head up the UK internet team. But on my first day they told me they’d decided the internet was taking their share price down rather than up, so it was time to close the team down. This was the dot- com bust – Marconi crashing, telecoms going up and down. So, I took six months off, which became 18 months. I was on garden leave for three months and so got an allotment in Buckinghamshire. There was a village show, and I was always amazed at how perfect the potatoes looked. Being naturally competitive, I decided to grow prize-winning potatoes. Did you win? I did! The guy who usually won was delighted because he said there’s no point if you always win. I got on really well with the old guys on the allotment. But of course, eventually I had to get back to work. I joined Advantage West Midlands – a regional development agency – around 2003. Then West Midlands had a problem – they were only at 69% broadband coverage. I made a few phone calls back to my
great scientist, so it was a bit of a decision point in my life. Australia Telecom were keen for me to go and join them, and I very nearly joined the Army, but in the end, I decided to move to a more business focused direction. So, I went to Durham to do an MBA. Where you somehow ended up evaluating a pure terephthalic acid plant in Thailand for NatWest Bank? Yes, that was odd. They’d heard about some of the mathematical financial modelling I’d been working on and asked me to evaluate an investment opportunity. Nobody else was going for it, so they wondered why. My analysis showed the finances looked too perfect, too manufactured; so there had to be something else. It seems ICI wanted to flood the world with an oversupply of the chemical – which is half of polyester – so they could make profits on their new clear plastic bottles. So, then you went back to BT? Yes. I needed a job, and BT was recruiting for financial risk management. I’d already been employed by them, so HR was happy. When it got to the technical part of the interview, I talked about the project and handed them a printed and bound copy of my dissertation. The senior manager said, “That’s impressive”. I replied, “It’s meant to be”. We both smiled and I think that was that! So you moved to London for the new job. How did it go? That job was the start of seven fairly miserable years in BT operations during the 1990s downsizing – the division shrank by 40%. I was head of Quality Management and supporting redundancy programmes, which was grim. But then I just got lucky again. I became Head of New Internet Products. My boss Peter Berry told me two great things on day one: “I’m retiring, do what you like” and “There’s something on the internet for everybody – go find it and bring it back to the UK.” So, I spent about three years traveling the world, finding internet products; while being pursued by mad inventors and head-hunters. It was brilliant.
You didn’t! On your first day?
I did. Everyone laughed at me, of course. But Professor Midwinter stopped the lecture and started to go through the maths. I can still hear him saying “oh, I see what you mean!” He was very tall – the head of department described him as “approximately three meters tall” – so at the end of the lecture, I was slightly nervous when he called me to the front. But he just asked if I was sponsored. When I said no, he asked if I’d like to be, and gave me a number to call. That phone call to BT Research Labs was the start of my telecoms career - I spliced my first fibre in 1987.
What were you actually working on in 1987?
We were making research versions of very high-speed optical switches and inline optical amplifiers. Rather than converting optical signals to electrical and back again, we were doping fibres to amplify light directly. These became crucial components for DWDM optics that now run the core of networks. But after a couple of years I realised I was going to work in the dark, working all day in a dark room and going home in the dark. I decided I needed to get out more! So what next? As well as working at BT, I was spending time doing triathlons and learning karate. I’d realised I that I wasn’t going to be a
Volume 47 No.4 DECEMBER 2025
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