Openreach Plan FTTP Broadband for 100000 Extra N.Ireland Premises

Openreach (BT) has today announced that they will invest a further £100m+ (capital expenditure) over the next 12-months into Northern Ireland. The funding will help to expand the availability of their 1Gbps Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network to another 100,000 premises, as well as to maintain their existing network.

So far Openreach have been building FTTP across Northern Ireland at a rate of over 3,500 premises passed per week and today’s announcement, which will also see the creation of 100 new apprentice roles in 2021/22 (they already employ more than 1,000 people across NI), confirms that this network now covers over 65% of properties in the region (530,000 premises – homes and businesses).

However, despite recently losing out on the £165m (public funding) Project Stratum contract to rival operator Fibrus (here), Openreach has always intended to continue their FTTP rollout beyond the previous March 2021 target, but until now we didn’t know by how much. All of this will support their £12bn investment to cover 20 million UK premises with FTTP by the mid to late 2020s (2025-30)

Apparently, this new build will include premises in rural towns and villages spanning the length and breadth of NI – from Castledawson in Co. Londonderry to Aughnacloy in Co. Tyrone.

Arlene Foster, First Minister of Northern Ireland, said:

“I welcome the commitment by Openreach to enhance and extend digital connectivity in Northern Ireland over the next 12 months. The £100m investment plan will mean that well over two-thirds of homes and businesses here will have access to its ultrafast full fibre broadband network.

This pandemic has shown us how important online services are to how we live, work, and engage together. Greater access to fast, reliable connections will make a real difference to people’s lives and will also play a key part in the recovery and renewal of our economy.

Importantly, this investment will also focus on the skilled workforce of the future with the creation of 100 new apprenticeship roles who will be supported to achieve engineering qualifications.”

Mairead Meyer, Director of Openreach in Northern Ireland, commented:

“As a major employer and the largest infrastructure builder in NI, we believe Openreach can play an important role in helping the region to build back better and stronger. We know that full deployment of ultrafast Full Fibre broadband by 2025 could boost the NI economy by £1.3 billion and employment by 1.6% [CEBR 2019 report]. We also know that the network we’re building will deliver even greater benefits in terms of levelling up connectivity to provide economic and social rebalancing across the region as well as having green benefits by enabling more home working and fewer commuting trips.

Our ultrafast Full Fibre broadband network build is rolling out at pace, with 65% of premises in NI, including 75% of those within the capital of Belfast, now able to access Full Fibre on our network. We’ve ambitious plans in place to continue to drive this forward over the coming months and this investment will support these efforts.

We’re now looking for more people to join our multi-generational team and to build a career at Openreach and I’m delighted to announce a further 100 new apprentice roles in the coming year. We take great pride in being an inclusive and diverse place to work, creating a supportive working environment and providing opportunities for development and growth. We’re encouraging anyone, no matter their background or experience, to apply and join us on the journey to build a network that will support the people of Northern Ireland for decades to come.”

The announcement represents good news for consumers in Northern Ireland. But it will be interesting to see how much of their new commercial expansion may end up building across areas that had previously been targeted as part of the Project Stratum contract – some concerns about this have already been raised (here).

However, we should underline that this £100m+ isn’t all going to FTTP and apprentice roles, a big chunk of it also being allocated to support the maintenance of their existing copper and fibre networks (they don’t say precisely how much). But whatever happens, come 2025 NI could well be very close to achieving near universal coverage of gigabit-capable broadband.