Ian Livingston has been BT's chief executive for six weeks and, by his own admission, has spent much of that time accelerating the telephone giant's fibre-optic plans.

The energy is characteristic: the fast-talking Mr Livingston, 43, is often in BT's headquarters near St Paul's Cathedral before 7am, leaving 12 hours later, and is glued to his BlackBerry, which he checked during yesterday's press conference whenever a colleague was handling questions.

Mr Livingston, previously the company's finance director, was the favourite to succeed Ben Verwaayen from the moment that he arrived at BT from Dixons aged 37 in April 2002.

Mr Verwaayen started at BT by cutting the price of broadband to below £30 a month. Mr Livingston's first strategic move - probably left on the table for him to announce by his predecessor - mirrors that earlier tactic as he tries to push British broadband into the next decade.

Mr Livingston, the youngest of four children, comes from Glasgow, where his father was a GP. He had only just turned 17 when he went to Manchester University to read Economics.

After graduating, he trained as a chartered accountant at Arthur Andersen, which included a short spell helping to set up accounting functions at The Independent newspaper. Dixons was his only other corporate employer and he became finance director at the electrical retailer by the time he was 33.

Mr Livingston's two children are now in their late teens. His Elstree home is a long way from Glasgow, but Mr Livingston retains his ties to Scotland as a fanatical follower of Celtic.

Moving up the corporate ladder meant that he was offered a seat on the football club's board last year, which remains his principal professional interest outside BT.