Premises in Wales to Get More Detail on BT Openreach FTTP Availability

Openreach (BT) will today make a small update to their ‘When can I get fibre?‘ broadband coverage checker, which should offer a bit of extra detail about the availability of “ultrafast” 330Mbps Fibre-to-the-Premise (FTTP) technology. But the change will only work for locations in Wales.

Apparently the update, which enables consumers in Wales to know where they are on the FTTP “fibre journey” (i.e. your progress towards being covered by FTTP, assuming it’s even due to be rolled out in your area), is part of a trial that BTOpenreach are conducting alongside the Welsh Government.

Openreach Statement

As part of a trial with the Welsh Government we have developed a FTTP journey, using the same journey structure as FTTC. This is scheduled to go live today.

This is an enhancement to the current FTTP journey which shows a customer as either ‘In scope’ or ‘Accepting orders’. The trial will give an indication of the stage the end customer is in, similar to FTTC. Instead of average timescales which the FTTC journey displays, the FTTP journey trial will give an estimated completion date.

We have also made some minor updates to the look and feel of the Openreach fibre checker to improve the presentation to end customers.

It’s a useful enhancement, albeit nothing major. The vast majority of Openreach’s “fibre broadband” roll-out in Wales is still based around their slower ‘up to’ 40-80Mbps Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) technology and thus most people won’t see FTTP as an option, although it has managed to reach a few little corners (e.g. Mold, Llanberis, Morriston etc.).

The recent announcement of another 2 million UK premises passed with FTTP (details) will surely benefit Wales too, although Openreach has yet to confirm their future roll-out plan and in any case the UK is home to a total of 25 million households. FTTP on Openreach looks set to remain fairly niche, with most of the operator’s future energy being focused upon G.fast instead.