BTOpenreach Add Phone Number and Address Check for “Fibre Broadband”

BTOpenreach has updated the “fibre availability checker” on their Superfast Openreach website with some new options, which helps to identify whether the area where you live has been upgraded to support the operators latest ‘up to’ 80Mbps capable NGA Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) or 330Mbps Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) service.

In short, the checker now accepts a more refined phone number search (previously it only worked off postcodes) and they’ve also updated their postcode checker so that it can provide visitors with a result based on your specific home or business address. The changes should give a more accurate result for your specific line, as opposed to focusing on the general area.

Unfortunately the actual details that Openreach’s system returns are still incredibly vague, which is why it’s often best when used in combination with your ISPs own checker or the BT Wholesale ADSL Availability Checker (despite the confusing name, this also returns data for FTTC/P lines).

Sadly one problem with both checkers is that they often struggle to return a result if your phone line has been installed as part of a fully unbundled (LLU) service (e.g. Sky Broadband and TalkTalk) or if you’re on a completely separate platform. On top of that there’s often still a time lag between when a service goes live and it being added to the checkers database, although experiences do seem to vary.

On the negative side it seems as if Openreach has removed their ‘Future Exchanges’ spreadsheet and only left one for ‘Accepting Orders’. It’s a move that seems counterproductive and will no doubt have some cynics questioning whether Openreach have done it to avoid questions about perceived delays from what is admittedly still a tentative roll-out plan.

Ironically Ofcom has been pushing Openreach to publish more data, not less.