Openreach Names First UK Exchange Area to go 100 Percent Full Fibre
Network operator Openreach (BT) has today announced that the rural village of Llanbrynmair in Powys (Wales) can lay claim to being the “first telephone exchange area in the UK” on their network to have 100% Full Fibre broadband coverage, meaning every single home and property in the village can now access their Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) lines.
The village itself, which is home to a population of around 1,000 (or over 500 premises), appears to have been upgraded with financial support from the UK Government’s Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme (GBVS) and Openreach’s own Fibre Community Partnership (FCP) scheme. The latter works with disadvantaged communities (e.g. rural villages) around England, Wales and Scotland to help co-fund related deployments.
Across Wales more than 50 communities, making up nearly 25,000 properties in some of the most rural parts of the country, could take advantage of this ultrafast upgrade as a result of the scheme. Just to put that in some context, more than 900,000 properties across Wales already have access to Full Fibre broadband via Openreach’s network and rising.
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Suzanne Rutherford, Chief Engineer Director for Openreach (Wales), said:
“We’re delighted to announce Llanbrynmair as the first telephone exchange area in the UK to achieve 100% Full Fibre coverage.
This milestone is a significant achievement for us and reflects Openreach’s commitment to building our Full Fibre network as far and as fast as possible.
To reach every property within an exchange area with Full Fibre has never been done before so I’m proud that we managed to cross this engineering challenge in Wales first. Issues such as difficult topography, access to land or cost can all have an impact on how far we can go within a telephone exchange area but I’m delighted that these potential pitfalls have been crossed thanks to team work – from our local engineers, the community and UK Government.”
Sir Chris Bryant, UK Government Telecoms Minister, said:
“It is fantastic to see an entire community in Wales having access to top-of-the-range internet thanks to this government-backed programme.
A good internet connection is absolutely essential from easing day-to-day tasks such as online shopping and banking, to helping international musicians deliver showstopping performances, or enabling a farming business to branch out into other avenues.”
We should point out that other exchange areas are very close to the 100% figure, although in those cases there are often a few premises that still aren’t covered for various different reasons. Equally, the definition of an “exchange area” is somewhat specific to Openreach, while other altnets could perhaps claim to have already covered 100% of premises in various other communities.
Openreach’s full fibre broadband network currently covers 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.
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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I thought this was already achieved by B4RN who cover 100% of properties in a parish?
Hence the reason for the second to last paragraph above.
B4RN are here just laughing at Openreach, they build to every premise in every area they build to! This should be the default, do a proper job not half of one!
and how many premises have B4RN covered to date vs Openreach?
Well done to OpenReach – I wonder how difficult and expensive that was.
From what I see the “Cherry Pickers’ (AltNets) only build to the biggest conurbations in a rural 100%* – anything difficult or or at the end of an OR cable run to a few (<5) domestic properties they leave it for OR to do the work. They don't always provide fibre in adjacent roads in towns.
I now see that has happen in 2 villages over 100 miles apart.
According to Wiki, it has a population of 920, not that many really, so no great achievement
When is the next update list for open reach for fibre I thought it was every 3 months there update the list
Was the other day
Current list online is May 2024.
Population of 920 – that’s why it too easy to get 100% full fibre coverage.
Yes they leve harf the job undone I gave up careing I was waiting so long now they say between now and 2026 well let’s just hope virgin are quicker and give me full fiber as there changing there entire network to fttp anyway so done waiting
Love this – Suped duper article. Go Wales!! Yay!
This is fantastic news. However where I live in England. Openreach have no plans at all to provide FTTP to the rural area I live in. The fastest speeds I can get is approximately 25 – 30 maps Download & approximately 5 maps upload. Can anyone help me.
Where do you live if you drop me a postcode I can see if we cover you (Zzzoom) FTTP
Zzoomm*
Have a look to see if you have Alternative networks where you live, most are better than Openreach anyway.
@Karl, if you are from Zzoomm, can you tell me why they give out such awful routers? I have been with Zzoomm for over 12 months now and i use my own router, but there are so many stories of the icotera being a bit naff on the wi-fi. I have had a look at mine, and it is pretty slow in the U.I.
such a shame because with a decent router the service is fantastic.
I am not saying all people have a problem with the router, but the problems people do have are normally to do with the router.
I feel your pain. Me and my mates were in this predicament. We simply built our own wireless network from one house who could get a leased line installed. Expensive setup costs but worth it for us.
No mention of how many people are using the service
What happened to Salisbury exchange. That went full fibre only about 5 years ago. Thought that was always supposed to be the 1st exchange that would have 100% FTTP available as it was the pilot area. I’m guessing they left a few houses without FTTP. So those will be in a right pickle if they can’t get FTTP as Openreach don’t supply it, but they can’t order any copper based services because the exchange is already FTTP only.
Can order copper service if FTTP isn’t available to a property
We are in the process of asking people to support our application at Little Brampton exchange in South Shropshire
This only just happened? I thought that was decades ago.
They could have claimed that for my village 3 years ago if they hadn’t left out only my house because of incompetence. Stuck now trying to work from home and everything else on 4G but nobody gives a stuff