28 May 2021 For information
This briefing is for NGA Communications Providers (CPs).
Openreach is announcing detailed plans for bringing full fibre FTTP to millions more rural homes and businesses
We’re pleased to announce today, 28 May 2021, our plans to build ultrafast, ultra-reliable Full Fibre FTTP to at least three million more homes and businesses in some of the UK’s most difficult to serve communities.
Our updated build plan will be fundamental to the UK Government achieving its target of delivering ‘gigabit capable broadband’ to 85 per cent of UK by 2025. It follows our announcement earlier this month that we will now be building Full Fibre FTTP to 25 million premises, including more than six million in the hardest to serve parts of the country.
We’re also announcing an extension to our biggest ever recruitment drive, with a further 1,000 new roles being created in 2021, on top of the 2,500 jobs which we announced in December 2020.
Openreach CEO, Clive Selley, said: “Building a new broadband network across the UK is a massive challenge and some parts of the country will inevitably require public funding. But our expanded build plan means taxpayer subsidies can be limited to only the hardest to connect homes and businesses - and we hope to see other companies step forward to build in the most rural areas too.
“This is a hugely complex, nationwide engineering project – second only to HS2 in terms of investment. It will help level-up the UK because the impact of Full Fibre broadband stretches from increased economic prosperity and international competitiveness, to higher employment and environmental benefits. We’re also delighted to continue bucking the national trend by creating thousands more jobs, with apprentices joining in their droves to start their careers as engineers.”
Openreach is already building Full Fibre faster, at lower cost and higher quality than anyone else in the UK, having made the technology available to more than 4.8 million homes and businesses so far.
We believe we can build Full Fibre to up to four million rural and urban premises a year (or c.75,000 per week, which is c.15,000 every working day), under our commercial programme.
The new, five-year deployment plan includes the majority of homes and business in around 1100 exchange locations - including market and coastal towns, villages and hamlets spread across the entire UK. The locations include Kirkwall in the Orkney Islands, Cardigan in Wales, Keswick in Cumbria and Allhallows in Kent.
Further details and timescales will continue to be published on the Openreach website here as detailed surveys and planning are completed and the build progresses.
Details of the announcement can be found on the Openreach news pages on our web site.
More information
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