Openreach announces 11 new locations for its Ultrafast Broadband rollout
Openreach (BT) has announced its plans to rollout Ultrafast Broadband to 11 new locations.
The rollout of its 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises based broadband is already available in 25 towns and will now be extended to Bury, Barking & Dagenham, Bexley, Croydon, Greater Glasgow region, Harrow, Merton, Redbridge, Richmond upon Thames, Sutton Coldfield, and Salford.
Last year, Openreach made the ‘Fibre First’ commitment to escalate the rollout of its Ultrafast Broadband and have now revealed their intention to hire an additional 3,500 engineers to ensure a faster rollout.
Clive Selley, Chief Executive of Openreach said: “Openreach is ambitious for the UK and is determined to build full fibre as quickly as possible to ensure the country has a reliable broadband network capable of supporting future data-hungry services and applications essential for boosting productivity and sustaining our position as a leading digital economy.
“We’re making great progress towards reaching our target of upgrading three million homes and businesses to full fibre by the end of 2020 – reaching another 13k premises per week - and these new recruits will play a crucial role in that programme.”
The full fibre network from Openreach currently covers 682,000 premises and now the telecoms operator has an ambitious goal of reaching three million premises by the end of 2020. To accomplish this, Openreach has confirmed a rollout pace of 13,000 premises a week.
Margot James, UK Minister for Digital, said: “Openreach’s publication of clear plans for where, when and how they will be investing in new fibre networks is an important step.
“Long term commitments from the industry like this are very important for local communities who need this kind of guarantee on when they will be able to take advantage of the benefits that fibre can bring.”
In terms of future plans, Openreach aims to cover 10 million premises across the UK by 2025 with a forecasted cost of £3 billion to £6 billion. However, the plans are dependant on the regulator, Ofcom, agreeing to assist with reduced logistic costs and shutting down old copper networks.
