Openreach Begins 1Gbps FTTP Broadband Rollout in Aberdeen UPDATE

The city of Aberdeen in Scotland is about to get a second “gigabit-capable” Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband ISP network after Openreach (BT) announced that it had finally started to roll-out in the area, which is already home to an existing deployment by rival Cityfibre (Gigafast Broadband).

Openreach officially added Aberdeen to their “Fibre First” deployment plan last October 2019 (here), which forms part of their wider £12bn investment strategy to cover 4.5 million UK premises by March 2021 and then 20 million by the “mid – to late-2020s” (here). Since then they’ve been busy surveying and recently began the civil engineering side.

The first work is currently getting underway in the Ashgrove exchange area of Aberdeen, which includes parts of residential areas like Sheddocksley, Mastrick, Northfield, Stockethill and Middlefield. Work on the first main fibre route is now complete and it’s anticipated that several thousand premises will join them by March 2021.

On the surface it may sound like Openreach will cover a lot of the city within the space of a single year, although crucially they haven’t actually said how many premises will ultimately be covered or when the project will complete.

Rosanne Moreland, Local Openreach Programme Director, said:

“Connectivity has never been more important to Scotland and it’s a privilege to be one of the people leading the nation’s journey from copper to fibre. Gigabit broadband will enable rapid changes in vital services like digital health and education – it will be vital in in helping to rebuild and grow the economy.

I’m hugely excited about leading such a significant civil infrastructure project for Scotland. The opportunity to do something in my homeland has a huge meaning for me, and a significant portion of our build will be in harder-to-reach areas. But to really turbocharge the build, we’ll need better and faster planning, access and roadworks rules.

We already provide extensive superfast and ultrafast services in Aberdeen but full fibre is the only technology to be fully future-proofed to meet the city’s data demands in the future. It’s more reliable and resilient, with fewer faults and more predictable, consistent speeds.

We’re working closely with Aberdeen City Council on the build here and, while some roadworks will be necessary, we’re using our existing network of poles and underground ducts to install fibre cables where possible in a bid to keep disruption to a minimum.

Whatever the technology, people using the Openreach network have access to a wide range of service providers, bringing retail competition which means real choice.”

However Openreach won’t have the city all to itself. Cityfibre and partner ISP Vodafone began a similar FTTP deployment (costing £40m) in 2018 and they connected their first homes all the way back in January 2019 (here), but despite this head-start they currently only cover around a quarter of the city and that’s a weakness their bigger rival may soon seek to exploit.

Inevitably there will be overbuild between the rivals, just as we’ve seen in some other parts of the United Kingdom, which will result in more choice for consumers but also more disruption from a second round of civil engineering work in many of the same areas. Nevertheless we think that both operators stand a good chance of profitability, not least since Virgin Media has generally shunned the city (zero presence).

UPDATE 25th June 2020

Openreach has clarified that while they expect to have reached several thousand premises by March 2021, the roll-out in the city will continue on past this point. Sadly though they still won’t say how much of the city (i.e. how many total premises passed) will be achieved or when.