Morrison Telecom Services Sign Openreach Fibre Rollout Deal UPDATE

Civil engineering firm Morrison Telecom Services (MTS), part of the M Group Services, has today secured an Openreach (BT) Network Services Agreement (ONSA), which will see them helping the operator to deploy and maintain their fibre broadband ISP networks across multiple parts of the UK.

The new contract (technically an extension of an existing deal) is similar to the one that Openreach recently signed with rival firm Kier (here), except that one only covered Hampshire and Berkshire. By comparison the contract with MTS will cover work across parts of Norfolk, Lincolnshire, the East Midlands, South Anglia, Lancashire, Cumbria, Manchester, Merseyside and Cheshire.

The contract will run for 5 years, with the potential to extend by 2 years. The scope of works will include the delivery of civils, poling, cabling and jointing activities. The work will be delivered around the clock, 365 days a year, by a team of 850 MTS engineers and support staff.

Alain Loosveld, MD of the M Group Services Telecom Division, said:

“This agreement cements our position as a primary, long-term supply chain partner to Openreach. We will now look to develop the strong and collaborative relationship we have established with Openreach by delivering this hugely important rollout programme on time and to the highest safety and performance standards.”

Previously MTS was contracted by Openreach in 2016 to support their delivery of the Government’s / BDUK Superfast Extension Programme (SEP), which was more FTTC centric, while today the focus is perhaps more targeted at the operator’s roll-out of Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) technology.

Under the current plan Openreach aims to extend full fibre lines to cover 4 million UK premises by March 2021 and then they have an ambition for 15 million by around 2025. Doing that will take a lot of engineers and so it makes sense to outsource some of that work. At this point that 15 million ambition is looking more and more like a solid target, even though they’ve yet to officially reflect it as such.

UPDATE 5th Feb 2020

Civil engineering firm MJ Quinn informs us that they were also successful in winning part of this contract for Openreach and have been awarded both Wales regions (Mid & North Wales and South Wales).