240000 UK Premises to Benefit from BT’s FTTP for New Build Homes Pledge

Openreach (BT) has confirmed that some 9,877 new housing developments, totalling more than 240,000 new premises across the United Kingdom, are so far set to benefit from new contracts that offer a “free” deployment of ultrafast 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premise (FTTP) technology.

The progress relates to last year’s agreement between the Government, Openreach (BT) and the Home Builders Federation (HBF), which initially aimed to deliver “fibre based” (FTTC/P/H) superfast or ultrafast broadband connectivity into new build properties across the country, either for free or co-funded (here).

Openreach’s original proposal has since been broadened (here) and as a result the operator now offers all new developments of 30+ homes the ability get FTTP built for free. At the time the operator said this “will mean at least 9 out of 10 new sites homes can have access to free FTTP.”

The latest to benefit is the 443-acre Barking Riverside (brownfield) site on the northern banks of the River Thames (London), which Openreach describes as being the largest of their associated 9,877 new housing developments. Apparently the developer will create housing for 29,000 people and Openreach intends to connect more than 10,500 properties on the development with FTTP (i.e. around 460 houses, 9000 flats and 1000 businesses).

Kim Mears, Openreach’s MD of Infrastructure, said:

“We are really pleased to be involved in what is one of the most ambitious and important developments in the UK. This major investment in ultrafast broadband reflects our commitment to ensuring the UK has a first class network, capable of delivering the latest communication services for households, businesses and other organisations across the UK.

We know that people are passionate about the speed and reliability of the broadband service that their communication provider can offer them, and for some the availability of ultrafast speeds will strongly influence their decision on which new property to buy.An ultrafast broadband network will be a major boost for this new community by ensuring that people living and working there have quick access to some of the fastest speeds available.”

All of this plays into Openreach’s plan to reach 2 million UK premises with FTTP by 2020 (they’ve already covered 435,000) and roughly half of those are expected to come from new builds, with the other half stemming from business connections. The network can deliver download speeds of up to 1Gbps (220Mbps upload), although the top 1Gbps and 500Mbps tiers are quite expensive (business orientated) and not yet widely available.

Most Openreach based ISPs prefer to offer packages with speeds of ‘up to’ 330Mbps, although issues of cost and availability mean that neither Sky Broadband nor TalkTalk offer such a service via the same network. However you can buy related packages from BT’s consumer division or smaller providers like Zen Internet, iDNET and AAISP etc.

NOTE: We put “free” in speech marks because excess construction charges will continue to apply where the site is more than 4.5 kilometres from Openreach’s existing fibre network and of course consumers still have to pay for the service itself.