BT suspends dividend to maintain broadband push

BT has told its shareholders to expect lower dividends as the telco announced it would not be paying a dividend for the first time since the turn of the century.

It intends to suspend its final dividend for 12 months to March and will not make any payments in the current financial year.

Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom and Orange have all taken similar decisions.

The telco, which is expected to face increased competition from a merged O2 and Virgin Media said it intended to concentrate on the delivery of fibre-to-the-premises broadband – a project expected to cost £12 billion. It’s set a new target to reach 20 million premises by the mid-to-late 2020s.

BT has refreshed its range of full fibre broadband plans . The ‘gigabit’ class top tier, Full Fibre 900, offers average download speeds of 900Mbps+.

The BT TV service was relaunched in February and now includes all Sky channels and Now TV, alongside the established existing Netflix and Amazon Prime Video services.

Sister company EE announced an exclusive partnership for the new BritBox video streaming service in March, giving customers on existing pay monthly mobile and tablet (4G and 5G) plans a free 6 month subscription. Any related BritBox data usage during this period is provided at no extra cost.

―Broadband TV News