Openreach Offers Even Quicker Proactive FTTP Broadband Upgrades to UK ISPs
Network access provider Openreach (BT) has once again tweaked their Proactive FTTP Upgrades process for ISPs, which will allow providers to optionally reduce the normal lead time down to just 15+ calendar days (vs the default 6 weeks). Normally it’s consumers that initiate an upgrade, but with proactive upgrades the initiator is your ISP (this may help with copper to full fibre migrations).
Proactive migrations thus arise where your ISP proposes an upgrade to their new Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) lines from your older broadband service (ADSL, FTTC etc.) and, at the same time, books an appointment for an Openreach engineer to carry out the upgrade (the end user is still able to confirm, reject or select a different appointment).
By default, this process has a 6-week lead time, but in July 2025 the operator introduced a new option for ISPs to opt into a shorter lead time of around 4-5 weeks (here). The latest briefing indicates that Openreach is now announcing a new option of just 15+ calendar days (subject, again, to ISPs opting in).
Advertisement
The updated Proactive FTTP Upgrade process, with this new option included, will go live on 1st October 2025. Openreach has also removed the exclusion of the Highlands & Islands and Isle of Wight regions “now that additional operational confidence in the process has been gained“.
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.
Advertisement
Leave a Reply
Privacy Notice: Please note that news comments are anonymous, which means that we do NOT require you to enter any real personal details to post a message and display names can be almost anything you like (provided they do not contain offensive language or impersonate a real person’s legal name). By clicking to submit a post you agree to storing your entries for comment content, display name, IP and email in our database, for as long as the post remains live.
Only the submitted name and comment will be displayed in public, while the rest will be kept private (we will never share this outside of ISPreview, regardless of whether the data is real or fake). This comment system uses submitted IP, email and website address data to spot abuse and spammers. All data is transferred via an encrypted (https secure) session.
It will be interesting to see if this has a noticeable effect on OR’s FTTP take up rate.
I would imagine this will help OR ISPs from losing customers generally. e.g. it’ll stop people switching between ISPs as I’m sure the offer of doing this will come with a new contract. It feels like an easy win to have a small team proactively contacting customers with a ‘deal’ for a speed bump – providing it’s managed and handled rather than order raised and the customer has to deal with regular support if something goes wrong. You could essentially target customers in the last ~3mo of contract and if they have the data, heavier users who may notice the speed increase.
It sure would be nice if you just order fibre
Big news – our fibre desert area in Gloucester FINALLY went live yesterday, and I placed my order within hours. My ISP (good old A&A) were all ready to process it, and gave me a provisional Openreach installation date 15 days ahead, later this month. Seems pretty good to me – is this already standard for consumer-initiated connections?