Alex Brummer’s

BELATEDLY, BT is rediscovering that it is the nation’s flagship telecoms firm, not an entertainment and sports outfit.

Instead of investing in ultra-fast broadband, BT has splashed out billions of pounds on sports channels, enriching Europe’s football clubs while offering the public mediocre customer service.

The shares owned by millions of ordinary Britons, from privatisation in 1984, have plummeted by 50 per cent over the last two years.

The company admits that in spite of spending £714million on football rights in the last year alone, it lost 5,000 pay TV customers as it quietly hiked subscription costs. The real scandal is that as Britain faces the challenge of Brexit, it is being left stuck in the mud compared with global competitors.

Spain invested heavily during the eurozone recession, and so 60 per cent of the country has ultra-fast broadband coverage, whereas Britain has a miserable 3 per cent.BT has insisted for years that enhancing the old copper wires would be sufficient to service British households.

The firm’s latest results show that the only part of the business doing well is EE, the mobile phone service, which was bought from Deutsche Telekom and Orange for £12.5billion in 2015.

It provides another demonstration of how Britain’s dominant telecoms company has been more interested in easy wins in sports and mobile rather than longer term investment in the nation’s digital infrastructure.