Openreach Publish Next 36 UK FTTP Broadband Rollout Areas

Openreach (BT) has today added another 36 new locations (towns and villages) to their £15bn rollout of a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network. The operator has also confirmed that their full fibre network has now covered 7 million UK premises.

The rollout is currently running at a build rate of c.50,000 premises per week – roughly equating to around 800 metres of cable every minute – and this is predicted to peak at c.75,000 premises per week at some point in the future (i.e. up to 4 million premises per year, which compares with the 1.9 million added in 2020/21).

The operator has already announced a large chunk of their build plan for the next few years, but there are still more locations to be added and today’s list of 36 new locations is estimated to add another half a million premises to their rollout plan (all of today’s additions are for England). In total, more than 2,700 UK towns, cities, boroughs, villages and hamlets have now been included into the company’s build programme.

The latest list (see bottom of this article) includes locations such as: Accrington, in Lancs; Boldon, in Tyne & Wear; Dudley, West Mids; Hornchurch, Gtr London; Kemptown, East Sussex; Manningham, West Yorks; and West Houghton in Greater Manchester.

Clive Selley, Openreach CEO, said:

“Over a whopping seven million homes can now connect to our Full Fibre network which is a fantastic achievement. We’ve come a long way – it took eight years for us to pass our first million premises, but only four months to pass our latest million.

We’re the UK’s leading network builder – going further and faster than all our competitors put together, and we’re still getting faster and building further every week, every quarter, And that’s important because it signals to the markets that we’re delivering what we promised. This is a life-changing technology and we’re delighted to be adding more towns and villages to our build programme today.

We believe that full fibre is the future for the UK and that’s why we want to deliver full fibre broadband to 25 million UK homes and businesses by December 2026. The shift from copper to fibre will be every bit as significant as the move from analogue to digital and black and white tv to colour. By eventually retiring analogue phone lines, we will be creating a simplified network which allows us to meet the enhanced needs of an increasingly digital society.”

More than 1.5 million homes and businesses have already connected to the new network and demand continues to grow – with the company handling around 35k new orders every week. The service, once live, can be ordered via various ISPs, such as BT, Sky Broadband, TalkTalk, Vodafone, Giganet and many more (Openreach FTTP ISP Choices) – it is not currently an automatic upgrade.

However, Openreach’s commercial rollout will still leave around 20% of premises unserved by their full fibre network, but some of those will be tackled by alternative network providers (as is already the case in quite a few areas). Meanwhile, for locations with no gigabit connectivity options or related plans, the Government’s £5bn Project Gigabit will attempt to help fill the gap and BT may well scoop some of those contracts.

In keeping with that, we note with interest that today’s announcement references their deployment to 2026 as being the “first phase” of their full fibre rollout, which would appear to suggest that they intend a second phase post-2026. This may of course just be a reference to Project Gigabit, but future commercial plans are also a possibility.

April 2022 Additions (36) to Openreach’s Full Fibre Build
Accrington – Lancashire
Boldon – Tyne and Wear
Brierley Hill – West Midlands
Dudley – West Midlands
Freckleton – Lancashire
Goodmayes – Greater London
Harrow – Greater London
Harrowden – Northamptonshire
Henley on Thames – Oxfordshire
Hornchurch – Greater London
Hounslow – Greater London
Kempston – Bedfordshire
Kemptown – East Sussex
Kingswinford – West Midlands
Kirby Muxloe – Leicestershire
Kneller Hall – Greater London
Knutsford – Cheshire
Manningham – West Yorkshire
Middleton – Greater Manchester
Montfort – Leicestershire
Mortlake – Greater London
Moulton – Northamptonshire
Pontefract – West Yorkshire
Priory – West Midlands
Richmond – Greater London
Sandal – West Yorkshire
Seacroft – West Yorkshire
South Shields – Tyne and Wear
South Shore – Lancashire
Teddington – Greater London
Turton – Lancashire
Upminster – Greater London
Wanstead – Greater London
Washington – Tyne and Wear
Westhoughton – Greater Manchester
Whitburn – Tyne and Wear