Openreach Finally Kicks Off Larger FTTP Broadband Build in Oxford
Network operator Openreach (BT) has finally started to deploy their new Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based gigabit broadband ISP network across the Cathedral City of Oxford (Oxfordshire) in England, which mostly reflects the central area covered by their main exchange.
The city of Oxford is a bit of an unusual one because, until fairly recently, the only real option for gigabit-capable broadband came via Virgin Media’s (inc. nexfibre) network. Openreach had deployed a bit of FTTP too, albeit largely only around the outskirts and far north of the city. Netomnia then arrived in 2022 and has since covered most of the southern half of the city (expansion is ongoing).
Suffice to say that, until now, Openreach has only invested a bit over £26m to cover a total of around 90,000 premises across the whole of Oxfordshire, with the city of Oxford itself seeing relatively little love from the operator. But all that appears set to change as they’ve finally begun to build across the central area of the city.
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Kasam Hussain, Openreach’s Partnership Director for Oxfordshire, said:
“We’re bringing full fibre broadband to Oxford 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 operator hasn’t said how long this roll-out will take to reach completion or how many premises will benefit, although it does form part of their existing build plan and that is currently due to reach completion at the end of next year.
Last year Openreach reported that around 50% of all homes and businesses which have access to their new network in Oxfordshire had taken a service from a supporting ISP (e.g. BT, EE, Sky Broadband, TalkTalk, Vodafone, Zen Internet, iDNET, AAISP, Freeola and many), which is well above their current average UK FTTP take-up figure of 36%. But it may be harder to translate that to Oxford itself, given the prior existence of two rival networks.
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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Whoop – the only city that appears to have worse fibre coverage than Gloucester. Now we won’t even have that to boast about soon. Hey, Openreach, my son wants to be a pilot and has just acquired MS Flight Sim 2024 – upgrading the wet string connection would be really helpful at this point!
Once again, CityFibre – who had a second flurry of activity in the southern half of the city last year – has vanished without trace. So it’s OR or bust.
Virgin Media, if you can bare to dirty yourself with an ISP that isn’t A&A.
See https://bidb.uk/ for OR activity.
Oxford should have had fibre broadband 2 decades ago. What went wrong here? Another example of BT incompetence.
Plenty of other companies who could have built there first. Why didn’t they?
Open reach are concentrating on overbuilding the areas where notominia are already operating in Oxford. They are making no effort in the areas not served by netominia in Oxford. The whole situation is bizarre, netominia rocked up, a year or so ago and put in lots of fibre, then just cleared off. Now OpenReach are moving in and they are losing their first mover advantage. Strange way to run a business, install expensive infrastructure and then abandon it, leaving an opportunity for the competition to come in and wipe out that investment.
No but they aren’t going to be able to be 1st in the street everywhere, they certainly have in many places and you can’t win ’em all as they say.
Yes, funny that BT only moved in when Netomnia (the mighty) moved in and done most.
Still, for me, if I had Netomnia cheaper price symmetric XGS-PON/50PON vs legacy GPON asymmetric BT it’s no competition and Netomnia wins outright, so wouldn’t care less what BT were doing with old tech. For those with no other providers, or just HFC Vermin Media, then its a plus from BT.
Netomnia only build where they can build at a reasonable cost (<£300 per premises passed). Openreach have also been following the same logic (so far) – to pass the maximum premises at the lowest cost. They will then do the more expensive stuff later. Oxford city centre is an absolute b****** to do any kind of works so I doubt if Netomnia will be going anywhere near there.
It’s not strange at all. They’re building to 30 million homes. That doesn’t happen overnight. So some areas get built first, then others come later. And there’s overbuild. Which is also known as competition.
It’s what Ofcom wanted. And what Openreach have been very open about happening.
Spouting some crackpot theory about how it’s anti-competitive and/or irrational is, in itself, anti-competitive and irrational!
My point is that netominia engineers came and installed their fibre in vast areas around east Oxford and Headington. Their kit is clearly visible on poles, but they just abandoned it, no service being offered in those areas, just a narrow corridor in the south east.
The city centre is less of a concern, a vast majority of the property in the centre belongs to the university and college, Janet is piped into most of those.
For me, I don’t care if it is openreach or netominia, the first to offer FTTP to where I live is who I will order from as my pitiful unreliable 15Mb FTTC is hopelessly poor, so any FTTP would be a vast improvement. If netominia hadn’t just cleared off, then it probably would have been them, but is looking likely that BT will overbuild them and start taking orders before them. Once people like me are in a new contract it is too late to get us to switch. I would prefer netominia but it isn’t worth waiting for if open reach gets there act together first.
“Openreach has only invested a bit over £26m…”
Lol. Only?
That’s still quite a lot of money where I come from.
Honestly, the expectation on Openreach compared to others in this market is wildly out of kilter.
Wherever altnets build it’s a pat on the back.
Wherever Openreach doesn’t build it’s a public flogging.
BT been around decades, established a lot longer and inherited infrastructure bought cheaply compared to starting from scratch like ALNETS faced. Still, the altnets deployed the right technology, not old tat like GPON. Even Cityfibre nearly upgraded their early part of the network that was GPON.
So yes, BT rightly get stick, and still deploy inferior tech.
Typical for OR to overbuild on Netomnia rather than covering the areas where Netomnia hasn’t built
@John – Typical for altnets to overbuild Netomnia rather than covering the areas where Netomnia hasn’t built.