Openreach Unveil 36 New UK Areas for FTTP Ultrafast Broadband
Network access provider Openreach (BT) has today announced that their multi-billion pound “Fibre First” rollout of Gigabit capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP technology will – over the next 12 months – be reaching parts of an additional 36 new locations across the UK (total now 74).
The development forms part of the operator’s on-going work to cover 4 million premises (homes and businesses) with “full fibre” 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 1.5 million premises have already been reached and their rollout is continuing to ramp-up (currently passing 20,000 homes and businesses every week). However we should caveat that Openreach doesn’t usually cover 100% of every area they list and unfortunately they haven’t said how many premises will benefit in each location.
In this latest phase Openreach has included the likes of Newcastle, Doncaster, Chelmsford and St Albans, whilst four new locations in Scotland (Kilmarnock in East Ayrshire and Bathgate, Broxburn and Whitburn in West Lothian) have also been prioritised following the Scottish Government’s decision to extend business rates relief on new fibre for a 10 year period (here); a not so subtle hint that they want the UK Government to follow suit.
Clive Selley, CEO of Openreach, said:
“We’re pressing ahead with our investment and Openreach engineers are now building in communities all over the country, keeping us on track to deliver against the bigger ambitions we set out in May.
The Government wants to see a nationwide full fibre network and we’re keen to lead the way in helping them achieve that. We know that if it’s going to happen, Openreach will need to be at the front doing the heavy lifting, so we’re working hard to build a commercially viable plan.
One headwind to investment which affects all full fibre builders is business rates, and we’ve been encouraged by the Scottish Government’s move to extend rates relief north of the border. I’m convinced that prioritising investment in faster, more reliable and future proof broadband networks will prove to be a no-regrets decision for future generations.”
Paul Wheelhouse, Connectivity Minister for the Scottish Government, said:
“We listened to industry and provided 10 years rates relief, five years more than the UK Government, with the aim of encouraging new investment in Scotland’s fibre infrastructure network. I am pleased to see that decision yielding early results with this announcement by Openreach.”
In terms of ISP choice, BT has a bunch of their own BT Ultrafast packages (G.fast and FTTP based) on sale, but we also recommend checking out other ISPs like Zen Internet, iDNET, AAISP, Freeola and Cerberus Networks for some rival options on the same network. Naturally this is only available to those covered by Openreach’s full fibre and for the time being that coverage is still very limited.
At present the top fastest consumer (residential) focused FTTP tier on their network is a 330Mbps (50Mbps upload) service, although Openreach has announced a forthcoming price reduction on full fibre packages and this included mention of two new 500Mbps and 1Gbps consumer tiers that are due for future launch (here).
All of this will no doubt help the Government to achieve their current target of supporting FTTP networks to cover the whole of the United Kingdom, although we still have significant doubts about the viability of Boris Johnson’s new 2025 target vs the original 2033 ambition. This will of course involve input from many alternative network ISPs and not just Openreach (summary of UK full fibre deployments).
As usual you can check out the fibre first roll-out page on their website, which includes a more detailed exchange level roll-out plan for each of the announced locations. The full list of locations announced so far is as follows.
| Date of Openreach announcement | Town, city or borough | |
| February 2018 | 1. Birmingham 5. Leeds 2. Bristol 6. Liverpool 3. Cardiff 7. London 4. Edinburgh 8. Manchester | |
| June 2018 | 9.Exeter | |
| September 2018 | 10. The Wirral | |
| October 2018 | 11. Coventry | |
| November 2018 | 12. Nottingham | |
| November 2018 | 13. Belfast | |
| December 2018 | 14. Swansea | |
| January 2019 | 15. Bury 16. Barking & Dagenham 17. Bexley 18. Croydon
19. Greater Glasgow |
20. Harrow 21. Merton 22. Redbridge 23. Salford
24. Sutton Coldfield 25. Richmond Upon Thames |
| March 2019 | 26. Salisbury | |
| April 2019 | 27. Armagh 28. Bangor 29. Ballymena 30. Greater Belfast
31. Coleraine 32. Derry-Londonderry 33. Enniskillen 34. Lisburn 35. Larne 36. Newry 37. Newtownards 38. Stockport |
|
| July 2019 | 39. Antrim 40. Barry 41. Bathgate 42. Ballyclare
43. Ballymoney 44. Ballynahinch 45. Banbridge 46. Broxburn 47. Broadstairs 48. Bromsgrove 49. Burgh Heath 50. Chelmsford 51. Carrickfergus 52. Cookstown 53. Craigavon 54. Doncaster 55. Downpatrick 56. Dungannon 57. Epsom 58. Ewell |
59. Gtr Belfast (Carryduff & Castlereagh) 60. Kilmarnock, E.Ayrshire 61. Limavady 62. Magherafelt
63. Newcastle 64. Omagh 65. Ramsgate 66. Saintfield 67. Strabane 68. St Albans 69. Solihull 70. Slough 71. Sheffield 72. Torquay 73. Whitburn, W. Lothian 74. Worthing |
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 and Linkedin.
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The Banbridge exchange (NIBB) currently has some FTTP deployments in place, but these are all showing as 330/50 only. Would this ‘announcement’ mean that the exchange is hopefully going to be upgraded to support gigabit services? Not sure if this is due to ECI hardware or something else.
The 2 things that cause 330 are ECI or lack of 10G backhaul.
Yes, I’m aware of that… the questions is, how do you find out which one it is (or both)?
From a previous article on here (IIRC), upgrading to 10g should be relatively straightforward. However, switching from ECI over to Huawei (or Nokia?) is a lot more complicated and from what I can remember there are no plans to actually do this.
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2019/06/openreach-uk-could-replace-eci-fttc-broadband-cabinets.html
https://kitz.co.uk/adsl/cabinet-lookup.htm#fttc_cab_info
The 330 is due to ECI hardware. Migration from it is not trivial. Openreach do need to come up with a solution. It’s crazy to leave them unable to get the new products and be left with VM’s hybrid product as the fastest solution.
CarlT, am I incorrect when I say that it is not only ECI hardware, but lack of 10 gigabit cablelinks that can cause the EU to only be able to order up to the 330/50 product? The article below seems to suggest this.
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2019/06/tackling-the-330mbps-speed-limit-in-some-openreach-fttp-areas.html
Given that Banbridge’s Fibre First rollout is due to commence in 3 months, it seems a bit daft to leave it like this.
I should also take this opportunity to ask, if these areas can only support 1 gigabit cablelinks, where does this single gigabit link run to? The final splitter node that serves premises from the pole, or before that?
Also, Joe, those links you posted refer to FTTC, not FTTP.
@CarlT
The average punter will not require more than 330 Mbps on FTTP for many many years. Now I do realise you’re not an “average punter” but for 99.99% of those on ECI FTTP kit, its a non-issue.
I should also add, when the time comes – IMHO at least 15+ years away – that 330 Mbps on FTTP isn’t enough for your average punter, then Openreach will have upgraded ECI FTTP kit long before then.
@Ken
“640KB is more than enough memory for anyone”
Just like those who insisted on that, I presume you know the applications (and the bandwidth they’ll be needing) that will be around in 5-10 years ??
If so, I’d like your crystal ball, please. Need to invest my pension wisely 🙂
@MikeP
I never said 330 Mbps will satisfy people’s requirements forever. I simply stated it will be good for quite a while yet. At present, for the average user 40-80 Mbps is perfectly adequate which is proved by TBB stats which state that 80% of Openreach FTTP users take out 80/20 or less. However the requirement from 40 Mbps to > 330 Mbps for Joe Bloggs isn’t going to happen overnight, it will be a gradual process which will take years.
lcl00 – the ECI stuff cannot take 10G CableLinks. It actually doesn’t have 10G ports. It’s missing other stuff, too.
There shouldn’t really be anywhere where 10G ports are available but there are none. The cost difference between 10G and 1G is small.
I think we’d all be much happier if they went as far as exchanges planned for upgrade to FTTP. At least then we could take a guess at what areas will see it.
Newcastle for instance is a bloomin big place.
You can get some of that here, which is frequently updated as build commences.
https://www.openreach.com/content/dam/openreach/openreach-dam-files/images/fibre-broadband/fibre-first/31-07-19_openreach_fttp_fibre_first_towns_cities_and_boroughs_programme_build-forward-look.pdf
Seeing exchanges planned for upgrade could be a red herring. Some exchanges will be upgraded to support FTTP to new build developments and not because there is a wider roll out planned.
No. Openreach don’t announce exchanges like this because of some new build. If they were doing that the list would be way, way longer.
And they are doing Gosforth wich already has G.fast. You can’t make this up LOL
The ‘not covering 100%’ of an area is significant. For me at least.
My area has recently had a swarm of Openreach and contractor vans throughout, making the pavement chambers and poles ready for FTTP.
I am slap bang in the middle of their roll-out area on their map and every other pole in the road and surrounding roads has had work done except the one directly outside my house. I can see no reason for this solitary pole to have been overlooked and it is impossible for a consumer to ask these questions of Openreach.
When I first saw the vans, and after Openreach updated their website, my address was showing as coming soon for FTTP and to sign-up for updates. If I check now, it says there are no plans for FTTP.
Given that Openreach have blanketed the area in their Fibre First program, it is unlikely that any alt-net will now want to serve the area and so my address and the twenty or so other houses served from the pole are an island of slower speeds compared to the rest of the neighbourhood.
I don’t understand the reasoning as the two poles 50min either direction are enabled.
Hi @Mark
Could simply be their is some problem installing to that pole, and it may get sorted out in time.
In order for copper switch off to work 100% FTTP coverage is required.
As OR are committed to a copper switch off date I’d be pretty confident that this will get sorted.
Most likely the pole itself needs to be replaced or the dusts are blocked.
“London” from the original batch of cities is rather broad, but it after going to the OR site, it looks like certain areas have been added now too. EG, Harrow is now on the list, wasn’t before.
Also a bit inconsistent, Harrow is listed as “in progress” on the map, but “complete” in the pdf.
Sorry, Harrow was on since Jan, but still inconsistent status between map and pdf.
FTTP!, some of us are still waiting for FTTC or ADSL2 to arrive at our exchange…. 🙁
it would be great if some focus on those areas which are “left behind” could be given, rather than a focus on getting those with a 30-50mb connection a faster one. I dream of the days of getting at least 2mbit and off classic ADSL.
There is focus on these areas and I agree they should bring the ‘have not’ areas up to speed instead of focusing on areas with already fast 50mbit+ speeds available.
In my area near Ramsgate, Kent (Minster Ramsgate exchange) they are currently running fibre cabling down to a small village called Plucks Gutter that still only has ADSL (but a very very long line length so they’ve only had 1-2mb speeds for years). So soon they will be able to enjoy gigabit speeds!
Fortunately for me (I have a long FTTC line length and get around 20-25mbit), the cabling runs down my road and it does appear Openreach have put provision on my pole (Splitter node by the looks of it – pole feeds around 15 properties) for us to also get FTTP in the near future – when this will be enabled for us I do not know.
Here, here Alec.
22mm on fibre lucky you we get 12 or 3mb of ADSL
Despite being just 3/4 crow flies from the exchange and 200m crow flies to the cab because of the really long routes the cables take
Same as me, Alec! I am still waiting for FTTC all these years. Fibre checker is lying to me last 10 years “Good news – we’ll be upgrading your area to Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) soon.”
Being on an Exchange Only Line here in Bishopsgate Exchange London E1, Openreach probably won’t upgrade to a new DSLAM cabinet. I look at roadworks.org every few days and there are no signs of a new cabinet being installed anywhere near my area.
This is just outdated information that has not been updated in the Fibre Checker website. Eventually I basically stopped this obsessive habit because I know this is just going to be more disappointing knowing that I probably will never get upgraded to FTTC never mind FTTP. Hyperoptic were interested to install in my building and as a Hyperoptic Champion of my building I was able to get the 30+ residents to register their interests. But as we know wayleaves are still a big problem here in the UK.
We have a £40,000 property in Sofia, Bulgaria that has FTTP while our £500,000+ property in Zone 1 City of London doesn’t even have FTTC, what a joke!
RAHUL
We have been through this a number of times
there will bee less and less EO Cure to FTTC – as that expensive and requires sigficant additional street furniture- FTTP will now mainly be technology of choice
Even if FTTP has been deployed – your building would not have it
So it seems it someone elses fault that your not preferred provider made a different commercial decision to spend it own money in a different way that you wanted it to ) where as your preferred provider wont agree a wayleave for your building
you could not make it up
This is both a new and exciting story, Rahul.
@Fastman: FTTP is no less expensive than sorting the remaining 2% EO Lines. At least Openreach don’t need to request planning permissions. I’ve been told via email 2 years ago that FTTC will come to my area and they will have to install 2 new DSLAM cabinets and rewire all the copper cables from the EO Line to a new Fibre Cabinet.
Currently, according to the latest article posted by Wired UK 4 in 10 private owned buildings suffer from wayleave agreements for FTTP. As we’ve been through this many times, I’m not the only one alone with this problem in urban areas. It may take many years with ample amount of pressure before a managing company gives permission unless a new legislation can be made to ease these permission issues.
I’m interested to know how the government will tackle that problem. Because without this issue resolved FTTP 2033 will not be met never mind 2025. 15 million by 2025 is also very ambitious. Making announcements but not being able to fulfil these targets cannot be taken very seriously.
I was going through Openreach’s Fibre First website and got so excited about how important fast fibre is etc that I just popped to BT’s website to place an order.
I can get 1Mb – 2Mb FTTC, I accepted all of the extra’s including a new Aerial (not sure what this is for as I am ordering FTTC and IPTV) and the cost is……. an upfront fee of £129.98 and a monthly fee of £198.67.
I want to know at what point BT’s website is going to throw out a popup asking me if I am crazy and do I know what the hell I am doing! Don’t be daft, they would take my money and laugh all the way to the bank.
I live in Capel,Surrey, we have full fibre exchange however all isp’s i have contacted do not have the capability to enable fttp only BT, very frustrating as the cost of BT is to high for me
The reason for this is currently BT and a few smaller ISP’s are the only ones wishing to sell FTTP services. The likes of Sky, TalkTalk and that are yet to enter the market of selling FTTP services
This is getting ridiculous now, don’t you think? When Openreach first announced 3 million premises as part of their Fibre First programme by 2020 initially they named 8 UK Cities in February last year. That seemed at least reasonable to me, but then it jumped to 14-15 for the same 3 million number.
They simply aren’t going to be able to cover enough of the areas with just 3-4 million premises.
By having now a total of 74 locations it means the coverage is going to be sparse!
I’d much rather appreciate if there are fewer locations being announced but thoroughly concentrating properly on these areas one at a time than making big, big announcements and then not being able to achieved all of the areas with enough FTTP coverage.
I’m aware that Openreach will typically not be able to cover the entire area 100% with the exception of Salisbury. I want to see real progress, not just announcements. Actually as a matter of fact, better first achieve 100% in 8 cities before announcing more locations, this would be taken more seriously with greater respect especially on those with Exchange Only lines who have yet to have FTTC.
By announcing too many locations, you are simply going to disappoint a lot of people out there who are left out without being covered. Especially when you consider wayleave issues that have yet to be addressed by the government. I don’t accept “If the conditions are right” for example by having easier wayleave agreements. For some landowners, property management teams the conditions will never be right and will never be the right time to agree permissions for Fibre, seriously!
Currently 4 out of 10 private residential buildings have permissions for Fibre installations denied.
These circumstances would mean that the coverage will be much smaller than anticipated. I don’t think 4 million by 2021 will be achieved without first addressing red tape unless of-course most of that coverage is being focused on rural locations.
@Rahul
I think you’ve missed an important point: Openreach is actually working towards 15 million premises by 2025, so needs to be accelerating its run rate accordingly. Besides, even looking at the 2021 target of 4 million, given that the volume of activity in an area is constrained by many factors, it makes sense to spread the work across a much larger number of areas.
‘Actually as a matter of fact, better first achieve 100% in 8 cities before announcing more locations, this would be taken more seriously with greater respect especially on those with Exchange Only lines who have yet to have FTTC.’
It started off sounding like it was going to make a valid point then veered off into complaints based around your own situation.
There isn’t some massive team going from city to city that’s divided up when new cities are added. Build in Edinburgh or Northern Ireland isn’t going to take resources away from Leeds or Birmingham.
A good part of the job is the contractors being used to unblock ducts, erect and replace poles, and install equipment in pits and on those poles.
I don’t recall these same complaints about Virgin Media. Perhaps CityFibre should stop announcing new areas and send all their staff to Milton Keynes to finish there before moving on to the next city? Neither completes full coverage either. Should be banned from being allowed to do anything until they’ve spent insane amounts of time and money on that long tail of the hardest to reach, most expensive premises in each area.
Ultra Slow broadband.
Spare a thought for the many of us in rural areas who get around 2Mbps on a good day. We can only look on as cities and towns, who already get fast broadband and are now being upgraded to ultra fast broadband. So much for an equal and fair society!
Not aware that such a society extends to telling private companies how they should spend their money.
BT are not part of the government just as Virgin Media and CityFibre aren’t.
I visited a friend in Swanage who had appalling internet speeds of <4Mbps down and <1Mbps up.
I checked with the online order system which confirmed this was as fast as it goes in this brand new small block of flats.
Talk of FTTP is all very well but some basic service should be universal.
Hence the USO (universal service obligation) coming into effect very soon. This will allow everyone the right to 10 meg or more.
I wouldn’t build your hopes up on the USO most people will be offered 4G rather than FTTP
@ProxyServer
“This will allow everyone the right to 10 meg or more”
Possibly splitting hairs but remember it’s actually the right to * request * 10Mbps, whether or not you get it might depend on your willingness to contribute towards the cost.
@New_Londoner. No you will get 10m it might just be 4g or worse Sat. But you will get it.
@Joe
The USO for broadband is not a right to get a service, any more than it was for telephony. It gives you a right to request a quote, however supply of the actual service may depend on you agreeing to contribute towards the cost if it exceeds the threshold.
You’re right that the provider will determine how to deliver the service, may elect to use 4G if that is more cost effective than a fixed connection, provided that it can meet the minimum speed requirement.
@Malcolm, yep no doubt at all.
It would be nice if Openreach would complete existing deployments that have started rather than selecting more areas for cheap PR. Some areas have had fibre work done over 12 months ago but are still not allowing orders.
I really don’t think Openreach’s press releases are impacting on when your network will go live and they aren’t related in any substantial way at all if your build was taxpayer subsidised.
I never suggested new PR impacts when an existing area goes live.
The point is there are many areas left half done or almost complete – why not complete them properly. Whether they are tax-payer funded, commercial rollout etc makes no difference.
It would make more sense to get work completed promptly so revenue can start flowing in… rather than keep concocting new areas which will be (most likely) sporadically covered as well.
The new areas are unlikely to impact on older ones that aren’t live for whatever reason. Different workflows.
A road next to our has it. The cable even goes past our house ! But they say we can’t have it ! Madness !
depends where the joint in the cable as -in the same
way the railway might go past the end of your garden but you wouldn’t expect to jump in fromt of a train and
Have noticed in Edinburgh that they been putting fibre pod looking things on existing telephone poles and on flats that already have a mess of wires on the outside. But nothing yet connected to them on the consumer side. Unfortunately, many of these areas are already covered by VM so seems like a stunt to inflate the numbers without actually doing the fibre all the way to the home. Additionally, a city like Edinburgh has 600k people, are they going to cover the whole place? Why can’t they specify areas?
They don’t connect the properties until people actually order?
They do specify exchange areas – https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2019/07/openreach-unveil-36-new-uk-areas-for-fttp-ultrafast-broadband.html#comment-208370
Edinburgh is a big place and they are doing it exchange by exchange. They wont put up any wires or run any wires to the customers until they order a service, customers might not want to take it up anyway.
When the Wirral is mentioned does this include the whole of the The wirral or just Wallasey for FTTP? as I’ve seen on roadworks.org & openreach pdf Mark provided Birkenhead is mentioned (FTTP) but nothing on Rock ferry (LVROC) exchange. Except for the G.fast rollout it’s a tad confusing considering the new housing estate in Rock ferry are all on FTTP.
My understanding is it’s just those properties that are connected to the Wallasey exchange but that may be incorrect.
Can any1 shed any light on these? showing up on poles around my area.
https://imgur.com/a/mVAFd0P?fbclid=IwAR2qd91ubLK4fjhc9qpGhwQFrjarK__GkxM8dyJdEL9ps22LbpgpdO1Q7Ac
So STILL no fibre for large parts of Carlisle and no plans to connect us in 2019. Made all the more ridiculous by the fact I live less than 100 yards from Cumberland Infirmary on one of the busiest roads surrounded by dozens of large businesses who DO have fibre access. I’ve known people who’ve had to move to gain fibre access. So many services and online products I can’t use due to restricted broadband speed. It’s a joke.
Hi, in regards to the Fibre First site:
https://www.openreach.com/fibre-broadband/fibre-first#fibrefirstlocations
If you do a search for your town/city & your local area comes up in purple (build in progress), does it mean all the premises inside that vicinity is going to get FTTP made available to them? I am a bit away from my local exchange but am within the very bottom corner section of a purple area on the map. Only got upgraded to FTTC a few years back courtesy of BDUK (OR did all the surrounding streets years before but left us on ADSL), so just wondering whether we’re going to get lucky this time or if it’s a case of wait & see again.