Openreach Name 19 New UK Locations for FTTP Broadband Build
Openreach (BT) has today named the next batch of 19 new locations to benefit from their ongoing roll-out of a new multi-Gigabit capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network, which together will cover around 200,000 extra premises. The new exchanges are all within their existing build areas (i.e. infill and further expansion).
The deployment, which will cost up to £15bn and has already covered well over 11.5 million UK premises (inc. 3.7m in the hardest to reach rural areas), is currently running at a build rate of c.55,000 premises per week. Some 3.5 million customers have already adopted the service via various different broadband ISPs, which gives the operator a strong take-up rate of 32%.
Overall, more than 2,829 towns, cities, boroughs, villages and hamlets are now included in the company’s build programme. The latest additions to this rollout plan include 19 locations that are spread across the UK in both rural and urban areas including: Chichester in West Sussex, Broughton in Greater Manchester, Perth in Scotland, and Pantymwyn in Wales.
List of 19 new Full Fibre build locations
| Exchange name | Exchange location | County | Build region |
| Chichester | Chichester | West Sussex | South |
| Bilston | Bilston | West Midlands | Central |
| Leamington Spa | Royal Leamington Spa | Warwickshire | Central |
| Beccles | Beccles | Suffolk | South |
| Costessey | Norwich | Norfolk | South |
| Saint Faith | Horsham St Faith | Norfolk | South |
| Evington | Leicester | Leicestershire | Central |
| Perth | Perth | Perth and Kinross | Scotland |
| Astley Bridge | Greater Manchester – Bolton | Greater Manchester | North |
| Daubhill | Greater Manchester – Bolton | Greater Manchester | North |
| Higher Bolton | Greater Manchester – Bolton | Greater Manchester | North |
| Broughton | Greater Manchester – Salford | Greater Manchester | North |
| Cheetham | Greater Manchester – Manchester | Greater Manchester | North |
| Collyhurst | Greater Manchester – Manchester | Greater Manchester | North |
| Middleton On Sea | Bognor Regis | West Sussex | South |
| Pagham | Bognor Regis | West Sussex | South |
| Shenley Church End | Milton Keynes | Buckinghamshire | South |
| Fernhill Heath | Worcester | Worcestershire | South |
| Mold West | Pantymwyn | Flintshire | Wales |
Openreach’s website is being updated to reflect the latest changes now, including via their map and their latest build plan. The operator typically aims to update the build information on their website at a minimum of every 3 months to adjust timings and add new locations as necessary.
The service itself, once live, can be ordered via various ISPs, such as BT, Sky Broadband, TalkTalk, Vodafone and many more (Openreach FTTP ISP Choices) – it is not currently an automatic upgrade, although some ISPs (e.g. TalkTalk) have now started to do free automatic upgrades as older copper-based services are slowly retired (this will take a few years).
However, Openreach’s commercial build will still leave under 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 gaps and BT may well scoop some of the related contracts (so far they haven’t won any).
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and Linkedin.
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Someone cannot count. I make it 20
@Bob
You as I count 19
It’s clearly 19, but you might be thinking the line break on “Shenley Church End” counts as two locations 🙂 .
You can take remedial counting lessons at night school Bob, contact your local council for details.
Yes, you.
To all those new locations announced.
Welcome to openreach purgatory.
Openreach: Good news ,we are coming, at some point, in the near to far future. But by 2026, probably, maybe, who knows lolz.
Yes same here, town build underway, but we still have no idea when you might get it, before Dec 26!
I’m lucky an altnet has rolled into town, and literally everytime I leave my house I see them conducting a new install somewhere. So between openreach announcing my town in 2020 and doing nothing to date, and an altnet announcing it end of last year and going live last month I bet openreach will lose a tremendous amount of customers by 2026.
Same here, announced a couple of years ago in one of these lists, not a thing happening and Openreach show 2026, so that’s 4/5 years from date of announcement. I think these list are nothing more than random towns for PR.
55k homes a week. Who’s building faster then?
Openreach replaced all of the telegraph poles on my street and those near by the end of last year. Having wondered why it seems Virgin are doing their fibre thing (we already have Coax) and F&W as well.
No sign of OR doing their infrastructure which is odd given F&W are using their trenches as far as I can tell.
@Alex I think the point being made is the announcement list of new areas actually means very little, and its arbitrary, they just seem to release a few cities and towns every few months, it doesn’t mean the build is happening any time soon.
If a town or city was announced only when the build had started and Openreach were there actively installing it would be more useful and truthful.
Announcing areas that haven’t commenced and may not commence for 3, 4 or 5+ years or more in the future is nothing more than marketing and PR.
So I checked 3 of these exchanges on the Openreach site and they all had the orange “building soon with services available within 12 months” status.
I don’t think there’s much point checking the other 16. It seems pretty obvious to me that a handful of previously unplanned exchanges being added to the list at this stage are likely to be near the top of the build queue. Especially when, as the article states, they are close to existing build areas.
@Phil, exactly that!
@Alex, I’d applaud 55k homes a month a little more of they were even remotely in the vicinity of my exchange, or the neighbouring exchanges that were announced in 2020.
I can recall being equally frustrated RE FTTC, but those announcements not being made until it was going into build stages. So the current method, at least addresses concerns of not being included at all. But being told it may happen sometime between 2026 and now is hardly concrete. I also appreciate build can be extremely complicated and impacted by several factors outside of companies controls.
Yeah it is the same here. In 2020 they said we are putting in full fibre and work will get underway with 12 – 18 months.
It’s getting late into 2023 now and work still hasn’t started. It is pointless announcing places when there is no inclination to provide coverage to them in the near term.
It just stops Gigabit vouchers…
@Phil
“If a town or city was announced only when the build had started and Openreach were there actively installing it would be more useful and truthful.”
Perhaps, but then they’d have even more complaints about nobody getting any forewarning and accusations that they’re just targeting particular areas because the altnets are there. They literally can’t win.
The idea of this – which nobody else does by the way – is that they give a longer term view to help industry, government and councils to plan accordingly whilst their postcode checker gives a more specific forecast for individual properties.
I get people being upset that they’re not front of the queue and that the plan changes occasionally, but that’s what happens with big complex projects.
Pour a glass for those of us in the Wemyss Bay exchange. We were scheduled for the next 12 months in the previous list but have now been bumped to “some time in the future”.
Axione had previously said they would build here soon but I think they got scared off by Openreach adding us to the plans.
The sceptic in me would say this was all deliberate.
Our exchange was part of a smaller Openreach FTTP build scheme a few years ago, but for some reason our road was never included. Now we’re left with <1mbs fixed line broadband and our "area" isn't eligible for any kind of Gigabit voucher.
We've tried reaching out to several altnets, but they won't come near us, and the Openreach executive complaints team has just confirmed we're not in their build plans at all.
Looks like our options are 4G, satellite, or move, haha.
Starlink is pretty good! Consistently downloading at 250+ Mbps in the evenings
interesting what scheme was that funded under and what was the town / village
Yes we’re looking at Starlink at the minute – equipment is a bit pricey but from what I’ve heard it’s worth it in this kind of scenario.
We’re connected to the Walpole St Andrew exchange – no idea what scheme it was but Openreach WBC FTTP is available for addresses right at the end of our road but they just didn’t build down our road for some reason.
I come back here in 2026 if Cuckoo Oak on the list plan! But, more likely it won’t be.
It’d be great if Openreach could just complete the building of FTTP in Edinburgh and the towns in the surrounding area [within 10 miles or so], as there’s a few places being left behind for no reason when all the surrounding areas have access to it [or are about to have access]. Announcing Perth feels like they’re moving away from the Central Belt quite significantly for me, so would like Openreach to not forget about the major capitals where the majority of customers are!
Isn’t Edinburgh covered by Cityfibre?
@Sonic The FTTP build doesn’t currently extend into my area of Edinburgh: its on the outskirts and is presently the only location which doesn’t have a clear build plan, despite FTTP being built everywhere else around it by Openreach. Not moving to CityFibre as I’d rather stick with BT, so pretty much beholden to Openreach getting stuff sorted out so I’m not forced into moving to Virgin Media, a service provider who makes it virtually impossible to cancel from.
I don’t know why I always get excited and check these lists. 1) My town is never on it 2) Even if it did appear the date is usually by 2026 now so little point anyway. Oh well – the altnets in the area may be skipping the odd road/taking a year longer than planned but at least I might get them available one day (but I won’t hold my breath given the 70s ducts in the estate no one wants to touch).
Looks like a lot of these locations are overbuilds. Mainly Cityfibre, but I could be wrong.
Chichester – Cityfibre
Bilston – Virgin Media FTTP and Cityfibre
Leamington Spa – Cityfibre
Beccles – Cityfibre
Costessey – Cityfibre
Evington – Cityfibre?
Perth – Aquiss? Neos?
Middleton On Sea – Cityfibre?
Pagham – Cityfibre?
Greater Manchester area – I believe there are a number of providers rolling out in that region.
CityFibre only recently started in Leamington Spa, I don’t think any if it is live yet.
In nearby Kenilworth Cityfibre have put in the mounting brackets for the Aerial Fibre Nodes and put a few microducts through the the centre of the town, now much activity recently.
The area serviced by the shenley church end exchange also has ready for service with city fibre.
The Greater Manchester ones seem to be coincidentally where virgin rolled out their fibre offering (I’m covered by Broughton). So I think this is someone at openreach finally realising how many installs VM have been doing since enabling their network. I don’t think there’s been a day go by in the last 3 months where there hasn’t been one of the bucket trucks running fibres, so maybe when my 18months are up there will be some competition.
Costessey – Upp
The build map in my area wentt from 12 months to unsure. The bulk of my “hard to reach” area has the infastructure built. They’ve connected three houses on the main road and are moving on to another three homes. My area, the only part nearby with any decent population, has been stopped at the entrance to the villiage. They’re skipping 200-300 guiarunteed take ups for three houses. None of which have any competition. Openreach are just weird.
Hounslow telephone exchange upgrade date not given yet main road has fibre. My street does not. What a mess!
They literally cabled around our cul de sac in East Kilbride and won’t say if or when we will get it, everyone around us has ultrafast and the highest speed we can get is 70mb
Still can’t understand why half our town has full fibre and the new estates… But we don’t. I’m 500m from full fibre street but it’s not available to us. All to quick sending out emails about it then get told sorry unavailable… Pull your fingers out and finish a town fully b4 you move on…. Give full fibre us all.