Openreach UK Finish FTTP Build to 10000 Premises in Twickenham
Broadband speeds of up to 1Gbps should now be possible for around 10,000 homes and businesses across Twickenham (London) after Openreach (BT) completed their rollout of a new ultrafast Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network in the area, which forms part of their wider “Fibre First” strategy.
The effort is part of their work to reach 4 million premises with FTTP across the United Kingdom by March 2021, which could be extended to 15 million by around 2025 and they may even go beyond that if the conditions are right (e.g. easier wayleave agreements, extension to the business rates holiday etc.). So far around 1.3 million premises have already been reached and their rollout is continuing to ramp-up.
The new CEO of BT Group, Philip Jansen, recently predicted that it would cost “roughly” £400m to £600m (capital expenditure) a year to meet their FTTP ambition of 15 million UK premises (here).
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Kim Mears, OR’s MD for Strategic Infrastructure Development, said:
“We’re delighted that the first residents and businesses in Twickenham can now benefit from our future-proof, resilient full-fibre broadband.
Twickenham already has great high-speed broadband, with more than 99.4% of premises able to connect to 24 mpbs and over. But full-fibre broadband will help create prosperity, spread opportunity and drive exciting new developments in sectors from small business to health and education.”
Cllr Robin Brown, Richmond Council, added:
“We want our residents and businesses to be amongst the best connected in the country, with high speed, high quality broadband available for all. Later in the year we will be consulting on the Council’s digital strategy for improving services and communications with Richmond residents.
Encouraging faster internet connection will be key. As well as faster downloads for entertainment at home, there are also benefits for businesses, including uploading, downloading and transferring large files, enabling vital new digital services like uninterrupted monitoring, video conferencing and streaming, as well as enabling things like greater flexible working for staff.”
End.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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“Twickenham already has … more than 99.4% of premises able to connect to 24 mpbs and over” and now has FTTP, while other areas will be stuck with sub-USO ADSL for many years to come (14% of properties are sub-USO in my area). Fantastic.
OK could be that the OR copper or some part of the infrastructure was EoL or costing a lot to maintain and therefore drove the investment?
It could also be that doing this and more widely enabled OR to stop paying for space in the exchange (they don’t own them anymore)?
There is going to be a lot of this going on and a lot of it will be down to cutting down on areas of high copper maintenance costs.
My total guess is that that this kind of intervention will be driven by:-
-ECI FTTC being EoL – Or just stop maintaining it as they can offer better for same money over glass
-Copper itself being EoL or getting to EoL by virtue of fault rates – OK they have to keep patching this due to USO for now but only has to be fixed to ADSL/POTS standards but as BB is over glass OFCOM can probably be persuaded that maintaining ADSL where there is glass for the same price is a waste of resource
-Getting rid of expensive lease back deals on exchanges
-The area being tractable for a fast roll out – ducts and poles not being too bad
I have no idea if this is really what is driving thinking but if I was putting a business case together these items would feature on my list of commercial drivers. When you add it all up and put in the electricity saved then there are decent savings to be made.
In case you’re not aware Fibre First is intended to cover FTTP in easy to do areas – which is usually urban/semi-urban areas even if they already get decent FTTC speeds. Those areas with < 10 Mbps will probably be done at the very end – that's assuming they get Openreach FTTP at all.
Yes, I am very aware that Fibre First is targetting the easy areas (as are Vodafone, CityFibre, HyperOptic etc.). I understand the business case for that, but as someone living in an area that will never have a business case I’m dismayed and frustrated by the lack of progress on EO and sub-USO lines (whether rural or urban).
Strange. Just the two exchanges nearest here, Hunslet and Morley, both have Fibre First FTTP areas that are EO so no Gfast or FTTC.
In the case of Hunslet virtually everything else is G.fast, the EO areas went to FTTP.
In Fibre First areas these are probably the most attractive properties to pass with FTTP – no FTTC revenue to lose.
Yes it does astound me the amount of investment going into areas that can already get fast broadband as opposed to those of us on EO lines in London where NOTHING is being planned or done…
Talk to your council. many of the issues have been related to wayleaves/permissions to dig roads and out and out greed for fees.
Hyperoptic connected up a few properties in the area early last year so any necessary permissions were available then but since then put the project on hold due to unspecified problems including not being able to buy bandwidth in the Rotherhithe area – looks like any available bandwidth is going to new properties or those council properties that Southwark council did a deal with Hyperoptic/ Community Fibre to supply
When “The Many” have so many choices of FTTP provider that the providers have nowhere else left to build, maybe the providers will move on to service “The Few” that would be grateful for one provider, never mind having a choice.
I’m not refering to extremely remote loctions here, just suburbs and villages a couple of miles outside of towns.
There may even be a larger % of takeup of premises past if they did.
Because fewer premises will be passed in less dense areas, the takeup would have to be higher just to make the same return as in a more dense area. For an improved ROI the takeup would have to be way higher.
@ 125us, Well yes , but the stats % would look awesome regarding take up in those areas. If we just ignore the actual numbers served.
Much like Fibre overbuild into very dense areas, properties passed stats look impressive, coverage area looks impressive, but take up numbers maybe not so much, as much as its a financial game its a PR target game.
It’d be interesting to see just what the take up of FTTP service from OR fibre was in already superfast areas is. I’d imagine you’d have to be a fairly disgruntled customer of Virgin cable for example to ditch them, and the TV package in favour of OR provisioned fibre.
@Gary
It isn’t a PR game now it is an ROI game.
The real ROI only comes when the forced migration occurs from copper to glass occurs.
ROI is vital to keep shareholders onboard.
ATM I guess take up rates will be poor until the Stop Sell of copper broadband products.
People may use FTTP over VM for latency reasons. TBH I would trust OR FTTP a lot more for robustness than VM hybrid.
Let’s be pleased OR are doing something!
Perton next then yes?
I think we should applaud OR for the work rather than moaning about where they aren’t building. I would assume that if they could build everywhere at once they would but that isn’t possible so it will be done in phases. If I was a resident in Twickenham then I would be extremely happy.
Well done Openreach.
Reducing shareholder dividends and spending that money on investment in the network will help speed things up
I’m not sure collapsing the share price will speed anything up. BT are building out FTTP at a phenomenal rate already.
When you look at the market capitalisation of BT with the already low share price and subtract the value of EE, the fixed line business starts to look vulnerable to forces that may not have investment in mind.