Openreach to Resume UK Ultrafast Broadband Installs Next Week UPDATE

Beware the backlog. Network access provider Openreach (BT) has been informing UK ISPs that new installations for their ultrafast broadband products (FTTP, Gfast and SOGfast), which had previously been delayed to 1st March 2021 onwards, are now set to restart at the later date of Monday 15th March.

Readers may recall that, during early January, Openreach took the difficult decision to once again delay many new provisions of their related products (here), as well as some other services, as part of their response to the UK Government’s latest COVID-19 lockdown.

The move was intended to protect both their engineers and customers from the then still rapidly increasing spread of the virus (i.e. the focus was on limiting work that would usually require an engineer to enter your home) and mirrored similar action from last spring.

Since then the Government has announced a roadmap for ending the current lockdown, which saw the first restrictions being lifted yesterday (e.g. schools returning) – a little later than originally expected – and as a result the operator has also adjusted their own plan to include an additional delay.

In other words, Amber working conditions for new FTTP, G.fast and SOGEA broadband installations will return on 15th March 2021 (i.e. internal provisions and repair work may proceed), while their Fibre and Network Delivery (FND) teams will return to Green status on the same date (no limitations). “In all cases our engineers will continue to carry out a personal risk assessment and maintain the current safety guidelines,” said Openreach to ISPs.

Naturally you can’t add another delay to new provisions without that having a further knock-on impact for those already awaiting an installation to take place. For example, a number of readers have recently been informing ISPreview.co.uk of additional delays to their FTTP installs, although this may vary from place to place.

As a side note, we do wish that Openreach would make updates like this available to the public because ISPs rarely publish such details directly, and it has relevance for consumers.

UPDATE 5:12pm

Openreach has today issued an update, which concerns the introduction of Saturday appointments in order to help clear FTTP orders.

Openreach Statement to ISPs:

“This briefing is to inform GEA-FTTP CPs that Saturday appointments will be used for GEA-FTTP from 20 March 2021 for the subsequent five weeks to re-appoint end customers whose appointments were impacted following the tightening of Covid-19 lockdowns.

We’ve published a briefing for CPs relating to Saturday appointments (excluding Northern Ireland) being utilised in order to help manage demand for end customers who had their appointments to provide GEA-FTTP, pushed out following the national tightening of Covid-19 lockdowns.”