Openreach Begins Main FTTP Broadband Build for Portsmouth UK
Network access provider Openreach (BT) has today announced that they’ve started to deploy their 1.8Gbps speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband ISP network across the south coast city of Portsmouth (Hampshire, UK), although it’s unclear exactly how many premises will benefit, but it is “expected to reach the majority” of properties.
The work, which is expected to take around 2 years to complete, forms part of the operator’s wider deployment of full fibre connectivity, which has already covered nearly 16 million UK premises, and they’re investing up to £15bn to hit 25m by December 2026 (here), before reaching up to 30 million by 2030.
Openreach has actually had a small amount of FTTP coverage in the city for several years, although the new deployment will clearly be much more significant. The catch is that Portsmouth already has significant coverage from several gigabit-capable rivals, such as Virgin Media and CityFibre. In addition, Glide has a modest deployment in the city, while both OFNL and Hyperoptic have a fairly small presence.
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Martin Williams, Openreach Partnership Director, said:
“We’re bringing ultrafast broadband to Portsmouth and letting local people know what to expect. This is a major infrastructure upgrade, so there will be more engineering teams, equipment and vans around town, and we’re working hard to keep disruption to a minimum.
Wherever possible, we’ll use our existing network of ducts and poles to avoid roadworks, new street furniture and disturbance. But there may be places where we need to install new poles, underground ducts and fibre cables because it’s the only way to make sure households get included in the upgrade.”
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ISPs (e.g. TalkTalk) have now started to do free automatic upgrades as older copper-based services and lines are slowly withdrawn.
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, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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This should excite no one when Toob 900/900 is available to most of Portsmouth for £29/mo. As per usual Openreach are late to the party.
Openreach got to us more than 2 years before anyone else, sometimes Openreach gets there first, sometimes the altnets do or VMO2 are already there.
On the contrary, I’m sure there’ll be plenty of interest from people who want Sky or EE packages with TV and lots of other value added extras thrown in. This seems to be so perplexing and distressing for symmetrical gigabit speed obsessives.
@Alex Your (or rather the operators’) “value-added” is my “paying for loads of stuff I don’t want, or need”.
The value it adds is that of the supplier, not the service. So many peeps I speak to paying BT around £100 a month for god-knows-what, coz they certainly don’t.
Openreach were first to us here in Plymouth (exc Virgin) . Cityfibre were only a few weeks behind though…lol
As usual, some areas get double or triple coverage, while other urban areas remain fibre deserts into 2025. None of it makes any sense. Vietnam will have full fibre coverage well before Britain does!
More bad news for my area Cuckoo Oak
More bad news for my area. Openreach are pretty useless now!
Hi Mr **********,
I hope you’re well and thanks for bearing with me while I spoke with our build teams.
How things stand right now
As you are aware, we are currently in the process of installing FTTP all over the UK, with an aim to provide 25 million homes with full fibre by 2026. Sadly, the project concerning your address has faced delays and we are now aiming for the technology to be delivered around April/May 2025. Delays are not uncommon as we have strict budgets and deadlines we need to adhere to, and there are numerous factors which may result in the delay.
Things such as extensive civils work, road closures and traffic management, and damaged network may result in significant delays in projects. In addition to this, if an area exceeds our commercial model budgets, we will look to push the dates back and revisit it at a later date. Due to the above reasons, we cannot and will not guarantee a date as to when FTTP will be available, as we understand circumstances may arise that are out of our control which can impact the delivery of the project. However, after speaking with the project team we are now aiming to have the project in your area completed in September 2026.
I realise that this news will be very disappointing, especially given the length of time that you have been waiting for the upgrade to happen but we do make clear that our plans can and do change.
Once again, I’m so sorry I haven’t been able to provide you with an immediate solution but I trust this answers your query. Please feel free to let me know if there is anything else I can help with; of course I’ll be happy to help.
I will arrange for this case to be closed on the 22/10 by 5pm, but anything you need please do not hesitate to reach out.
Thanks,
***********
Executive Complaints and Escalations team
Openreach
Maybe they’re pushing it back a month every time you email them?
Seems an entirely reasonable response
[ With tongue firmly in cheek ]
Meanwhile, Cityfibre’s roll-out in Portsmouth has been delayed as their only competent engineer has been called away to fix a fault in Glasgow…
I do wonder if someone at Openreach has a sense of humour.