Openreach Start FTTP Broadband Builds in Glastonbury and 9 More UK Areas
Network operator Openreach (BT) has this week confirmed that they’ve recently started to roll-out or expand their new Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based gigabit broadband ISP network across the Somerset festival town of Glastonbury, as well as 9 more locations that stretch right across the United Kingdom.
Just to recap. Openreach is currently investing up to £15bn to expand the coverage of their new full fibre network to 25 million premises by December 2026 (here), which will include around 6.2m in rural or semi-rural areas. On top of that, they’ve also expressed an ambition to reach “up to” 30m by 2030 (there are c. 33m in the UK), albeit somewhat dependent upon a favourable outcome from Ofcom’s Telecoms Access Review 2026 (TAR).
The latest locations on Openreach’s existing roll-out plan to see the start of Street Works to build their new full fibre network have this week been confirmed as Glastonbury, Ferndown, Millport, Wemyss Bay, Ventnor, Ilfracombe, Royston, Low Moor, Padiham and Kingswinford. Sadly, the operator hasn’t said how many premises in each location will be reached.
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The new 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although some providers have started to do free automatic upgrades as older copper-based services and lines are slowly withdrawn.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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They’ve just started planting poles on the Ruscote and Hardwick estates in Banbury which they missed when they did the original rollout 5 years ago due to them being DIG. I suspect once they’ve done those Banbury will meet the 75% threshold to put copper on stop sell.
Same in parts of Dankshire town.
What is interesting is that OR are also installing in the areas covered by the alt-net, the one that stopped halfway.
In about 2 years, a lot of existing alt-net subscribers are going to have to make a decision whether to stay, or shift to a multi choice isp service using OR.
Another hole in the wall.
Rolling out fibre in the UK has been a bit of a failure to incentivise the market. Operators seem to prefer to overbuild each other to get customers, rather than fill in the gaps first. The areas either side of us have a choice of 3 providers, whereas we don’t even have one provider servicing our property. There is nothing particularly difficult about our area, it’s just we’re between inner and outer London zones.
AltNets had two in-built advantages; they were first, and they were cheap. With Openreach on the scene they no longer have the first, and with the money running out for many of them then bang goes the second as well.
“It’ll all end in tears”, indeed. (With BT/EE offering up to £300 contract buyout to cover any early termination charge, it might even be quicker than the 2 years you mentioned).
Re earlier than 2 years, EE have posted two flyers, Sky been around. In the meantime the aggregator is nearly full, all done in about eight weeks. Further down the road that aggregator has at least four ports used.
Nothing for Parkgate, Fareham still. Toob stopped their build their too.
I thought Openreach have already done this area? Whereabouts are you?
It’s infuriating to hear about all the new area builds when they can’t even finish areas they’ve already built in. We’re surrounded by every gigabit tech you can think of in a city but live on a tech island of 40 houses just abandoned in the middle with only copper available.