Openreach and Grosvenor Co-Investment Deal for Ultrafast FTTP in London

Openreach’s (BT) roll-out of Gigabit capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband tech has been given a boost by their first co-investment deal with a major UK landowner (Grosvenor Britain & Ireland), which will see their network being expanded across the firm’s London estate (130 sites).

The company’s estate exists in the heart of the West End, reflecting around 130 residential and business sites across Mayfair and Belgravia (i.e. more than 600 homes and businesses). In the grander scheme of things that’s only a tiny slice of Openreach’s current aim to reach 2 million UK premises with FTTP by 2020, although similar deals with other landowners are expected to follow.

On top of that the operator claims that “hundreds more properties” in the area will also gain access to their slower ‘up to’ 80Mbps Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC / VDSL2) service as a result of the deal. The agreement forms part of Grosvenor’s 5-year £2 million digital investment programme, which includes new broadband as well as WiFi and mobile connectivity upgrades.

Kim Mears, Openreach MD of Infrastructure Delivery, said:

“We’re investing heavily in the infrastructure London needs to support its thriving digital economy, and our partnership with Grosvenor is a great example of that.

We want to build a much larger full fibre network across the UK, and with the right conditions we believe we could make FTTP available to as many as 10 million homes and businesses by the mid-2020s – but the engineering, commercial and operational challenges are significant.

There’s no doubt that greater collaboration will help us to overcome these challenges, so we’re working closely with landowners, developers, Communications Providers and government to achieve that. Co-investment models like this one are part of the answer, and we’re keen to replicate this with other landowners and developers throughout the UK.”

Will Bax, GBI Executive Director for the London Estate, said:

“We have a 20 year vision that our London estate, at the heart of the West End, works harder for its communities and all Londoners by adapting – with better streets, greener spaces and more active and enterprising places that appeal to the many.

This digital upgrade, the first of its kind in a landmark deal, confirms our commitment to the long-term vision we have for this great London estate.”

Work on the deployment has already begun and the aim is to complete this by July 2018. Openreach claims that over 96% of premises across London can now order “superfast speeds of 30Mbps” or above and the focus now is on how best to tackle that final 4%, which in being such a big city still represents a significant number of homes and businesses.

Sadly many properties in central London are still suck on awful pure copper Exchange Only Lines (EOL), which are notoriously difficult and expensive to upgrade via network rearrangement work.