The London Borough of Bexley has welcomed a new partnership agreement between its street works team and Openreach (BT), which looks set to see 25,000 homes around Crayford and Erith being upgraded to ultrafast Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP technology during 2018/19.
At the time of writing Openreach has so far deployed their FTTP network to cover a total of 631,000 premises across the UK and their Fibre First programme aims to reach 3 million premises by the end of 2020 (aspiration for 10 million by c.2025).
So far 9 cities have already been confirmed under the first roll-out phase (Bristol, Birmingham, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Exeter, Leeds, Liverpool, London and Manchester), but a total of 40 UK towns, cities and boroughs are expected to benefit. The deployment pace is now running at 10,000 premises per week and we assume this will go even higher.
Councillor Peter Craske, Bexley Cabinet Member for Places, said:
“We are delighted with the results of our partnership working with Openreach because broadband is now a vital part of the borough’s infrastructure.
Fast and reliable broadband will benefit thousands of local people and make the borough even more attractive location for businesses.”
Kim Mears, Openreach’s MD for Infrastructure Development, added:
“Bexley already has access to extensive high-speed broadband, with around 98 per cent of households and businesses now able to connect to speeds of 30Mbps and above.
We’re now taking this to the next level by working closely with local partners like Bexley Borough Council to build a future proof, ultrafast FTTP network capable of 1Gbps speeds – that’s about 24 times faster than the current UK average of 44Mbps.
This has the potential to completely transform the way people go online, and opens up a world of opportunity. It’s also an important step in future-proofing Britain’s broadband network and supporting emerging mobile technologies like 5G.”
At present most of the broadband coverage in Bexley stems from Openreach’s slower FTTC / VDSL2 (around 10,000 of these were added in 2017/18 alone) and Virgin Media’s ultrafast HFC EuroDOCSIS network, although there is a small but growing pool of G.fast. Nevertheless FTTP has been, until now, barely even visible but that looks set to change.
“Fibre First programme aims to reach 3 million premises by the end of 2020 (aspiration for 10 million by c.2025).”
“The deployment pace is now running at 10,000 premises per week and we assume this will go even higher.”
To reach 3 million its going to have to speed up significantly. Excluding the 631,000 premises that have FTTP Openreach at a rate of 10,000 per week will fail (AGAIN) to meat their aim.
There are 126 weeks until the 31st Dec 2020…
126 x 10,000 = 1,260,000 premises. Which would mean they do not even make it to the half way mark.
Add on the other FTTP already done (which from my understanding would be beyond generous as the 631,000 is the current TOTAL of FTTP not what has only been done under the Fibre First scheme which is what is supposed to be aiming for 3 Million) and you get.
1,260,000 + 631,000 = 1,891,000 Which still leaves them well over 1 Million short.
Im not even going to calculate the comedy 2025 figure.
Good luck BT, hopefully this time you can speed up and meet your “aims”.
It’s always bloody london!
Come do this in Newport S Wales and then you might have a genuine town which is not already saturated, rather than a poxy suburb. !
@Simon
In all fairness to OR up till this year London has seen very little FTTP except in new builds.
Most of OR’s FTTP efforts have, in fact, been rural.
More people live in the London Borough of Bexley than live in the city of Newport.
Just move somewhere with FTTP? Believe you’ve the means? I am. 🙂
Carl – Yes and looking at Brighton or Bournemouth – I was just venting 🙂
Having seen the pricing and packages BT offer for FTTP I can envisage a very limited takeup apart from those who truly want/need these speeds
When I got BT FTTP the price was the same as my ADSL.
I would love FTTP. I offered to pay for installation. No answer as of yet. I am in a new build, 8 of the approx 300 homes have access speeds of +-25mb FTTC.I am one of the 8. The rest have ultrafast FTTP. Suppose I will have to wait for Virgin.
Having worked for a 2nd tier supplier on Openreach’s FTTC roll-out since 2012 I can confirm that the London Borough of Bexley were one of the worst, most obstructive councils to deal with when looking to deliver new infrastructure. Questionable objections to infrastructure proposals from both Street Works and the Local Planning Authority and slow and sometimes unforthcoming responses to direct requests for information such as highway adoption status requests have hampered delivery and no doubt left its constituents behind others in Greater London and the rest of the country. Having said that I welcome the new partnership between L. B. Bexley and OR and the benefits it will bring to end users in the area.