Openreach Reveal 56 New UK FTTP Broadband Rollout Areas

In an unexpected move, Openreach (BT) has today added 56 new locations (towns and villages) to their £ 15bn rollout for a new gigabit-capable Fiber-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network. The operator’s full fiber network has now covered 7.2 million UK premises (inc. 2.3m in the hardest to reach “final third“Of the country).

The rollout is currently running at a build rate of c. 58,000 premises per week and this is predicted to peak at c.75,000 premises per week at some point in the near future (ie up to 4 million premises per year, which compares with the 1.9 million added in 2020/21).

The operator has already announced a large chunk of their build plan for the next few years, but there are still more locations to be added and today’s list of 56 new locations is estimated to add just under half a million premises – including both rural and urban areas – to their rollout plan. The move is unusual because Openreach usually does quarterly build updates, yet today’s update follows one that occurred just last month (here).

The new locations being announced today includes – Aylesford, Bishop Stortford, Cambridge, Dartford, High Wycombe, Hartlepool, Peterborough and Stockton. In total, this means more than 2,700 towns, cities, boroughs, villages and hamlets are now included in the company’s build program.

More than 1.8 million homes and businesses have already connected to the new network and demand continues to grow – with the company handling around 35k new orders every week. The service, once live, can be ordered via various ISPs, such as BT, Sky Broadband, TalkTalk, Vodafone, Giganet and many more (Openreach FTTP ISP Choices) – it is not currently an automatic upgrade.

However, Openreach’s commercial rollout will still leave under 20% of premises unserved by their full fiber network, but some of those will be tackled by alternative network providers (as is already the case in quite a few areas). Meanwhile, for locations with no gigabit connectivity options or related plans, the Government’s £ 5bn Project Gigabit will attempt to help fill the gap and BT may well scoop some of those contracts.

NOTE: Such build lists are tentative, which means that some locations may be removed (eg if found to be too expensive due to complications) and others added. Openreach has not yet completed their rollout plan, so more updates will follow in the future. Inclusion should thus NOT be considered as equating to 100% coverage of each area.

May 2022 Additions (56) to Openreach’s Full Fiber Build

UPDATE 2:03 pm

For anybody wondering why Openreach has issued a rollout update so soon after the last one, it’s apparently all down to the sheer scale and pace of the program. The locations being announced today are understood to be those where Openreach has found they have enough capacity to get on with the build, while at the same time keeping an eye on giving consumers the earliest possible view of where they’re going to be building next (transparency).