Openreach Claim Full Fibre Broadband to Boost UK Economy by £66bn
New research from network access provider Openreach (BT), which was pieced together by the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr) and Stantec, has claimed that the operator’s ongoing roll-out of a Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband ISP network could contribute up to £66bn (GVA – Gross Value Added) to the UK economy in 2029.
Openreach are currently investing up to £15bn to expand the coverage of this new full fibre network to reach 25 million UK premises by December 2026 (here), which includes around 6.2 million premises in rural or semi-rural areas. On top of that, they’ve also expressed an ambition to reach up to 30 million by 2030, although this will partly depend upon the outcome of Ofcom’s next Telecoms Access Review 2026 (TAR).
The new research claims that this roll-out is expected to drive productivity gains and improvements to public services, including supporting more than 620,000 people back into the workforce. It will also enable more than 1 million people to work from home, allegedly contributing an additional £19bn annually.
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Taken together, the productivity and workforce improvements highlighted in this report should, it claims, boost the GVA impact to total £66bn per year by 2029 and £73bn per year by 2034.
Key findings include:
➤ Job Creation: Flexible work options could help 620,000 individuals, including parents and older workers, return to work.
➤ NHS Support: An estimated five million online appointments by 2029 to help meet rising healthcare demands, doubling the current number.
➤ Educational Benefits: A boost to pass rates for 21,700 students in key subjects. This equates to over 13,000 pupils (1% of the total number of Key Stage 2 students) achieving pass rates that are higher at Key Stage 2 Maths, Reading and Writing as a result of the increase in Full Fibre connectivity between 2023 and 2029. Additionally, more than 8,700 more pupils (1% of the total number of Key Stage 4 students) could achieve pass rates that are higher over the same period.
➤ Increases to Property Values: Homes with Full Fibre see an average increase of £1,900.
➤ Environmental Gains: By 2029, 1.4 million more home workers will mean fewer car journeys and lower carbon emissions.
Just to be clear, this research is entirely focused upon the impact of Openreach’s own FTTP network and is not considering any of the rival operators and networks that exist.
Clive Selley, CEO of Openreach, said:
“Our new Full Fibre network is a growth and prosperity engine. This report highlights how it will create jobs, enhance connectivity, and drive economic improvements across each nation of the UK, but continued investment depends on a stable policy and regulatory environment.”
Not to sound too much like a broken record, but we always recommend taking such future forecasts with a pinch of salt. This is because trying to accurately gauge the economic impact of deploying faster broadband is notoriously difficult, not least since most premises won’t be starting from a point of zero connectivity (e.g. over 98% of the UK have access to speeds of 30Mbps+ and over 85% can access 1000Mbps+ via various networks).
Likewise, we’re all very different in our consumption requirements, and not all homes and businesses get the same benefit from having access to significantly faster broadband speeds than are currently available. For example, the difference between 10Mbps and 1000Mbps is largely irrelevant when talking about basic tasks, like online shopping, email, messaging and banking etc.
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On top of that we have to consider the impact of other things too, such as take-up (i.e. it can take years for this to grow once a new service becomes available and not everybody will opt for the fastest packages), as well as issues like slow WiFi (i.e. having 1Gbps+ isn’t much help in those rooms that struggle to get more than a few tens of Mbps via wireless) and the fact that there are many other FTTP network operators in the market.
One particular example of the difficulties of such forecasts can be seen in the above report’s suggestion that homes with access to Full Fibre see an average increase of £1,900. Now this is all very well and good, albeit often stemming from more anecdotal sources. But it only really makes a big difference when there’s a clear dividing line between the haves and have-nots. The advantage gets eroded as FTTP coverage matures toward near universal reach (i.e. once something becomes normal, it ceases to be a differentiator when moving home).
None of this is to say that FTTP won’t produce big economic benefits, indeed we’re confident that it will, particularly in poorly served rural areas where the differences are often much more apparent. But figuring out precisely how much is subject to many caveats (i.e. reports like this are typically over optimistic), as well as the unquantifiable aspects of how the internet may evolve.
Equally, simply having a broadband connection that is more reliable and delivers lower latency, is something that can be hard to put a price tag on. Speed is not the only factor. In short, few could disagree that there does tend to be a strong positive relationship between broadband investment and growth, even if there is an issue of diminishing returns with respect to the speed and technology choices of those connections.
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Speaking of which, Openreach’s service, 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 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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My house should go up by £3800 as I have 2 full fibre suppliers available.
“Homes with Full Fibre see an average increase of £1,900.” Now the vast majority have gigabit speeds, this could be considered more as “Homes without full fibre are £1,900 cheaper”
Correllation/causation is unclear. Wealthier households in more desirable areas where prices rise faster are more likely to get FTTP first.
Winston I don’t know where you got that from, but IME that is not the experience I’m seeing. Especially because lower income areas here are pole fed, they’re a much faster/easier/cheaper upgrade from the network point of view.
Actually it’s usually the Wealthy that are the hardest to upgrade. As they have nice houses and think they have all the answers they draw out the process and make the installation much harder and delay the whole thing.
Yes they may get exactly what they ‘think’ they want in the end. Mean while the whole rest of the area has been hooked up and using the service.
Why is making housing more expensive a benefit to anyone? Except possibly landlords (some of whom refuse to allow installation)
whoever pays the piper, picks the tune…everything is wonderful in Openreach land
Funny because 10 years ago they couldn’t give two s***s
10 years they had BDUK contracts to meet
10 years ago they thought G Fast was the way forward…
I can see it helping a house to sell in a village that’s only partially upgraded to full fibre. If one house is on FTTC at less than 10mbps and one has FTTP available. On the other hand in my village we are pretty close to the cabinets so get 70mbps so although fibre is available hardly anyone has bothered with it.
Openreach don’t even bother connecting the MDU I reside in. I have made several requests over the last 3 years as all our neighbours are connected. The owner of the property has agreed with my request, the property management company agreed and have actually put in a request themselves for the MDU to be connected. The response from Openreach was pretty blunt:
“Good Morning,
Thank you for submitting your expression of interest in full fibre to your premises under SM-00314342.
Your building is currently not in plan.
We have recorded the details you have supplied and when we are ready to proceed to survey, we will make contact in order to do the following:
To gain your permission.
To acquire access details.
To confirm that you have right to sign the wayleave for the entire building.
To provide the asbestos report for the entire building.
This contact will be made by the MDU specialist in the future when the record on our systems has populated the necessary details to be progressed. Please do not accumulate the information stated until the specialist has made contact.
Disclaimer – At this MDU Desk we do not offer timescales and or updates as this goes through the relevant MDU specialist.
Thank you once again.”
I am leaving the name of the sender out. But I do want to escalate this as it’s quite ridiculous having fibre running through the ducts a few metres away and ignoring 12 potential new customers.
Please advise who I can contact to escalate this matter if any of you have had similar experiences that got resolved in the end.
Thanks
That’s a standard response. There’s a process with a line of buildings in and a line of buildings out. It’s pretty normal for MDUs to be waiting while the properties outside are covered and obviously they’ve a dedicated team dealing with landlords and management companies asking about coverage. Smaller MDUs are also a potential ‘issue’ as they can be a pain to cover.
The escalation path would be via their complaints route now. If there’s a genuine complaint they will deal with it rapidly. If it’s about that you think your building should be at the top of the queue they likely won’t and will point to that the building is in the queue already and will be dealt with in due course. They deal with complaints about coverage all the time and if they prioritised every one of them nothing would ever end up being done.
As sure as night follows day, if an article mentions Openreach, someone in the comments will complain that their flat/house/road/village/town hasn’t been fibred yet, and its not fair.
I’m still waiting you have 2 years open reach? Tick tock
Same here. Announced in 2020, nothing done since. They have said it’ll be done in the next 6 months, but that’s been the answer every 6 months since 2020.
It’s been three months since Openreach said FTTP was available to my home.
They dug an enormous pit outside my house only to tell me that there was no fibre in the street.
For three months we’ve been waiting for Openreach to sort that out and have barely seen a hint of anyone from Openreach doing any work.
Are Openreach basing their ‘reach’ figures on the numbers of properties serviced by an exchange that’s been upgraded, rather than the number of properties that can actually get the service?
Anyone see this as spin and or bluseter and or BS, about as well thought through as EV’s and no ved/road tax, HS2, possibly worse?
Job creation:, doing what, that current connectivity prevents? What about all those involved in implementing new infrastructure – what will they be (not) doing when 80-99% of he work’s done, redundancies already happening as the Alt nets go? Oh and who is paying for the equipment in the home for these workers, the laptops/software/phones etc?
NHS Support: Wow so you get past the front end (and some of this is duplication requiring in person anyway, which would have been done as ‘oner’ without a call) how is is adding capacity to the back-end / hospitals?
Educational Benefits: Really . better than in person in class, not to mention the interpersonal skills not developed, or Lab needs etc?
And if students are remote what are Uni’s going to do with all their student poperties.. Mind yo if uni’s can close 70% of their buildings then student fees could be reduced considereable (like Unis will do that).
Increases to Property Values: Or is that decrease for those without (and is that value greater thean the costs to provide (all the taxpayers takings moved by govenrment to altnets/ real physical providers)?
Environmental Gains: Maybe good but then there’s the revenues lost via lack of transport use / less fuel used, less servicing , Gov’ lack of taxation, garages closing – redundancies..?
“claims that this roll-out is expected to drive productivity gains and improvements to public services, including supporting more than 620,000 people back into the workforce. It will also enable more than 1 million people to work from home”
So the net gain to the ‘work’ if from home or the office is? Or is it the same work so no actual gain..?
All it seems to be doing is moving office costs to employees, benefitting whom exactly, employers passing their office opex savings on to employees raotflmao ?
What are these new 620000 jobs actually going to be..? Noting that real productivity comes from manufacturing and selling tangibles, products, food, not just cycling monies between ‘services’ / make work. Utilities op ex should be minimised and not proffited from at consumer cost.
Then on top of all this is tax take, is is increasing or decreasing (on same rates) or to cover the losses what rate increases/new taxation will there be – all this has been captured and thought through…? (Brexit, HS2, ‘Levelling up’ as demonstration of abilities, (other than proletarite manipulation))
Good post and yes it is all spin PR. Openreach even has scheduled layoffs
There’s already something called a phone. Online consultations are not any different
The property price one is actually a funny double edge sword: if you want housing to be more affordable then don’t give it fast internet
Online consults use video. That’s why they are online consults not phone consults.
Productivity is a measure of work done within a set period by a set number of people not a measure of ‘stuff’.
You may not agree that the services sector contributes to the economy however given it’s the vast majority of it in the UK reality disagrees. Do feel free to tell plumbers, electricians, etc, that because they don’t manufacture and sell stuff beyond reselling parts they aren’t providing any value. Close most education and back to the workhouses for most I guess.
That was the part of the diatribe that got my attention immediately. I won’t bother with the rest beyond to point out that if the economy is going to lose a million jobs as a baseline and an action creates 620,000 it will still have created 620,000. The end result may be a net loss to the economy of 380,000 but that action creating 620,000 ensured the net loss wasn’t a million. An action can be of benefit to the economy and provide growth even during a recession. If the services sector increases GDP by 1% but the rest of the economy shrinks by 2% doesn’t mean services didn’t grow or provide value to the economy. Something that slows a price fall by 5% contributed 5% even if it didn’t totally offset the fall. Etc, etc. Basic logic.
As a pensioner I’m not feeling the boost (As the actress said to the bishop etc etc).
But recently the yellow banner of disappointment has raised its head again on my BT account indicating another spoonful of Digital Voice PR is about to be dispensed, . . . . following absolutely zero happening last year after a similar occurrence and a few public events locally.
It would appear that not even competition from the imminent arrival of Mr P’s fully-loaded Blackjacks is enough to liven up OR, so I’ll probably be heading by the direct route to China (Syndrome wise) before my area gets FTTP.
Economic growth helps the rest of us afford to pay for your triple lock, health and social care, Nick. If you had investments you’d be feeling the benefit. We need that else either our tax bills get even more obscene or pensioners start paying more for their social care. The dependency ratio is awful and the economy can’t afford this much longer. We’ve already cut pretty much everything else to the bone.
You’re welcome.
@withc’ Hmm, yes, sound ‘investments’ like water companies, service infrastructure raped by shareholders, for short term gain, not responsible ‘chaperoning’ of the ‘board, all on the take and not managing sustainable service, then when there’s maintenance bill due to negligent management, they want the consumer victims to pay for it – what a failing of money market accountability.
Define Real growth, rather than recycyling that looks busy but is really just bloating overheads rather than net sustainable gain, The stockmarket continually rising is just bloating the yet to be realised debt of tangibles /vapor. Just like market saturation, take tvs, eventually when everyone has 3, barring failure / built in obsalecence, forcing change (e.g. no terrestrial / no satelite etc), forcing subscription, then tv manufactures will dwindle- not sustainable. After we’ve all got fibre, then data bloat excepted what extra bandwidth will be needed, . advancement or marketting/ ‘lobbying’ lead ‘change’. When it comes to necessities like water there are only finite resources, conservation is better than consumption, or contamination. Too many opportunist parasites trying to make something out of very little.
Triple lock, well I’ve paid my dues for 44 years worth, and there’s hipocracy, gov’t charge increases at RPI, gov’t payous at CPI which its cost basket is ‘varied’ to suit someone for something.. How sustainable is that differential? I remember when cpi came in, imo a con to to make inflation increases look smaller, but of course it introduced dual standards, arguably like the NI cap @ ~ hrt, effectively a just a hrt tax discount rather than a flat rate for all.
It is good to debate, even democratic, but spin and marketting, or marketting spin (?) should be tested and adjudicated for concencus and honesty?