Openreach – a wholly owned and independently governed unit of the BT Group – has announced that its fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) network now passes six million homes and businesses and is on course to connect 25 million locations across the UK by December 2026. The infrastructure firm notes that the network is reaching 47,000 new homes and businesses every week, with engineers laying around 770m of cable per minute, or connecting a new premises every 13 seconds.
Openreach has also outlined the next 170 locations that have been earmarked for an FTTP rollout. The next phase of the deployment will cover around 1.5 million homes and businesses across both urban and rural locations including: Bridgend, East Kilbride, Felixstowe, Grantham, Grimsby, Guildford, Inverness, Kidderminster, Lincoln, Lowestoft, Maidstone, Newton Abbot, North Finchley, Oldham, Port Talbot, Romford South, Rugby, Riding Mill, Scunthorpe, Stannington, Simonswood and Trowbridge.
Clive Selley, Openreach CEO, commented: ‘Reaching six million homes and businesses with Full Fibre represents nearly a quarter of our total build target so is a significant milestone and underpins our commitment to build the largest and best Full Fibre network in the UK.’