8,000 Social Homes in Barnet Set for Upgrade to FTTP Broadband

The Barnet Council in London has reached a wayleave agreement (legal land/property access) that will enable Openreach (BT) to deploy their gigabit speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network to cover 8,000 households managed by the UK council’s social housing provider, Barnet Homes.

The deployment will form part of Openreach’s commercial £15bn investment to roll-out their new full fibre network to 25 million UK premises by December 2026 (nearly 18 million have already been covered), which is to be followed by their ambition to reach “up to” 30 million premises by the end of 2030.

The service itself, once live, can be ordered via various broadband ISPs, such as BT, EE, Sky Broadband, TalkTalk, Vodafone and many more (Openreach FTTP ISP Choices) – it is not currently an automatic upgrade, although some ISPs are doing free automatic upgrades as older copper-based services and lines are slowly withdrawn.

Barry Rawlings, Leader of Barnet Council, said:

“We are committed to improving digital access for our residents. Our partnership with Openreach is enabling us to connect our social housing to full fibre and ultrafast internet speeds. This upgrade will allow our residents to use the latest technology to meet their work, study and leisure needs, as well as accessing many essential online services.”

Elaine Hope, Openreach’s Partnership Director for London, said:

“This is a major infrastructure upgrade, so you will see more of our engineers, vans and equipment out and about. 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 or underground ducts because it’s the only way to make sure as many premises as possible are included in the upgrade.”