Openreach Expand FTTP Builds for Three Project Gigabit UK Broadband Contracts UPDATE2

The UK government has posted contract modifications for three of Openreach’s Project Gigabit contracts – Call Off 1 (Lancashire, West Berkshire, Staffordshire, Surrey, Hertfordshire, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire), Call Off 5 (Essex and North East England) and Call Off 3 (North Herefordshire, North Wales, Shropshire and South West Wales). The move expands their planned deployments of full fibre broadband ISP networks into rural areas.

Just to recap. The Call Off 1 contract was most recently (here) valued at just under £147m (public subsidy) and aimed to expand their Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network to a further 51,821 premises (they’ve already built to 14,460 of these – 28% complete). As for Call Off 5, which is more recent, that one was valued at £61.92m (here) and aimed to reach 24,710 premises (they’ve already built to 580 of these – 2% completion). Finally, Call Off 3 was previously valued at £119.29m and aimed to reach 52,059 premises (they’ve built to 1,060 of these).

The contracts both form part of Openreach’s wider Single Supplier Framework deal – now valued at c.£1.2bn, which is focused on Cross-Regional (Type C) procurements (no other suppliers tackle Type C). Type C typically reflects remote areas where no or no appropriate market interest has previously been expressed before to the Government’s Building Digital UK (BDUK) agency, or areas that have been descoped or terminated from a prior procurement (examples here, here, here and here) – Openreach have recently absorbed several previously failed Project Gigabit contracts with different suppliers.

However, it’s important to remember that such contracts are not static and their scope, as well as committed levels of public funding, can change over time for a number of different reasons – informed by regular ‘Open Market Reviews’ of existing UK deployment plans. For example, commercial operators may expand or reduce their roll-out plans in the same region(s), which can reduce or grow the scope for public investment within those same contracted areas.

The contracted operator could also find the deployment to be more expensive, or possibly even cheaper, than previously envisaged. Such adjustments may occur due to changes in build costs and interest rates / inflation, as well as any unexpected obstacles to street works or greater efficiencies of build than planned or expected. Suffice to say, there can be various reasons why the contracted scope of related builds and the level of allocated public funding may change over time.

The latest change to Call Off 1 raises the contract value to £154m (up by £7.12m) and increases its coverage target to 54,824 premises (up by 3,003), while Call Off 5 sees its value raised to £70.3m (up by £8.38m) and its coverage target rise significantly to 35,296 premises (up by 10,589). Similarly, Call Off 3 saw its value rise to £150.59m (up by £31.29m) to target 65,240 premises (up by 13,181).

The additional scope is to be welcomed, albeit with the catch that there may be further changes in the future, which could go in a different direction. So, it’s not always easy to tell what the final picture will be until you actually reach the end. But in this case, most of these new changes reflect Openreach’s absorption of other failed Project Gigabit contracts with different suppliers and, until today, we didn’t know what final impact they would have in terms of total premises and contract values.

UPDATE 9th May 2026 @ 7am

Added a modification for Call Off 3, which came in too late to be included yesterday.

UPDATE 11th May 2025 @ 8:20am

The change for Call Off 5 appears to have a greater significance, since it will now become the first Project Gigabit contract to help upgrade urban areas (here).