Openreach’s UK FTTP Broadband Rollout Extends to The Wirral

The Metropolitan Borough of Wirral (Merseyside) in North West England will soon see their first premises being connected to Openreach’s (BT) new 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) “ultrafast broadband” ISP network, which forms part of the operator’s phase one deployment plan.

At present Openreach’s “full fibre” FTTP network, which takes their optical fibre cable all the way to your front door, has so far covered 631,000 UK premises and their “Fibre First” programmes aims to reach 3 million by the end of 2020. After that there’s also an aspiration for 10 million by around 2025.

In keeping with that they’ve been busy hiring 3,500 extra engineers (here) and the initial deployment plan is expected to focus on reaching up to 40 UK towns, cities and boroughs. So far only the following areas have been confirmed: Bristol, Birmingham, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Exeter, Leeds, Liverpool, London and Manchester (nine locations).

Today’s press release describes ‘The Wirral’ as being the “10th area to benefit” and it’s separate enough from Liverpool for that to be considered correct. Otherwise Openreach continues the tradition of vague piecemeal announcements by failing to offer much detail, although they do say that the first to go live are in Wallasey and “tens of thousands of homes and businesses across the borough” will benefit.

Clive Selley, CEO of Openreach, said:

“Openreach is getting on with building the infrastructure Britain needs to stay ahead in the global digital economy, and families and businesses in the Wirral will be among the first to benefit from this commitment.

Since starting our ‘Fibre First’ programme earlier this year, Openreach’s team of engineers are now in the final stages of completing the FTTP infrastructure to nearly 180,000 premises, in nine cities we’ve already announced. Despite the challenges of planning, street works and permissions, that’s thousands of homes we’re in the process of building to every week and it sets us on course to hit our ambition of building 10 million FTTP by the mid-2020s.”

Liam Byrne MP, Shadow Digital Minister, said:

“Building fast internet connectivity is as crucial to Britain’s competitiveness as railways and roads were in the past. In today’s economy the internet is not a luxury but a utility, so providing the widest possible access to the fastest possible broadband must be a national infrastructure priority. It’s great to see Openreach’s ambition matching the Labour Party’s goal to futureproof the UK’s digital infrastructure. Fibre to the premises is available to 4% of British premises compared to over 60% in competitors like Japan and South Korea, so delivering on ambitious targets is essential to make sure Britain is a leader in the digital race.”

A quick glance at Thinkbroadband‘s database reveals that around 99% of The Wirral can already access a “superfast broadband” (30Mbps+) capable network, which is almost entirely thanks to Openreach’s existing but much slower Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC / VDSL2) network and Virgin Media’s 362Mbps capable cable coverage (the latter reaches around 58% of local premises).

As usual we’d expect some overbuild of existing FTTC/Virgin Cable areas, as tends to be customary in such densely populated and thus competitive urban environments.