42% fewer employees, 7 years in the future? Including hopes for things like this: "Jansen also said that around 10,000 fewer people would be needed to service and repair digital networks, which “go wrong less often” and can be fixed more easily than older networks." That feels optimistic. Modernization does help with that sort of thing in some ways. But it also often adds complexity, higher dependency counts, etc.
> which “go wrong less often” and can be fixed more easily than older networks. What they mean is that consumers will be stuck with slow internet connections. As a result of customers switching to other providers they’ll have less equipment breaking down. Since you know it’s no longer in use.
The BT group run Openreach who most other UK ISPs will resell as their own connection. Customers switching to other providers won't harm them as much as you'd think.