National network access provider Openreach (BT) has today revealed that their Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network, which offers broadband speeds of up to 1800Mbps to homes and businesses via hundreds of ISPs, has now covered 17 million UK premises. This includes more than 4.3 million premises in “rural and hard-to-reach areas“.
The data means that Openreach, which also saw their overall broadband usage (data / internet traffic) surge by 10.8% during the year (representing traffic from multiple communication providers), added a total of 4.2 million additional UK premises to the coverage of their “full fibre” network during 2024 (i.e. an extra home or business every 8 seconds).
The operator is currently investing up to £15bn to expand the coverage of this full fibre network to reach 25 million UK premises by December 2026 (here), which includes around 6.2 million premises in rural or semi-rural areas. On top of that, they’ve also expressed an ambition to reach up to 30 million by the “end of 2030“, although this is partly dependent upon a favourable outcome from Ofcom’s next Telecoms Access Review 2026 (TAR).
Clive Selley, CEO of Openreach, said:
“Fast, reliable connectivity is essential for the UK, and the increased traffic on our broadband network is evidence that customers are increasingly reliant on it in their daily lives.
We’re building and connecting people faster than ever before and I’m proud of the progress our engineers have made. We’re well on our way to delivering our ambition of reaching 25 million homes and business by the end of 2026, and now our sights are set on reaching 30 million premises by the end of 2030,
While over a third of properties have already switched, there’s plenty of room for more people to get a better connection right now. So why not check if you could get faster – and potentially cheaper – broadband today.”
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although some providers have started to do free automatic upgrades as older copper-based services and lines are slowly withdrawn.