Openreach says full fibre roll-out has reached six million homes

It is only 13 days since the news that Openreach as part of the BT Group financial results that Openreach had passed 5,780,000 premises with FTTP and today the milestone of six million premises passed has been announced. This does not mean 220,000 premises passed in just two weeks, but rather that many have been passed in the time between 30th September and whenever the figures in the press release were gathered.

When the financial results were published we estimated the footprint was just 8,000 premises shy of the six million total, so it may be the press machinery has taken a week or so to gear up or our estimate was slightly optimistic given they say they are building to 47,000 premises a week.

“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.

We’re building Full Fibre faster, at lower cost and higher quality than anyone else in the UK and that is testimony to our engineers and build partners who are working flat-out to deliver this life-changing technology to rural, urban and suburban communities all over the country and we’re delighted to be fleshing out our plans with more details about where we’ll be building.

More than a million customers are already enjoying our most revolutionary and reliable broadband ever and that number is growing all the time. That’s a great start, but there are millions more who could connect today – so I would urge people to check out our website to see when we’re coming to your street. ” – Clive Selley, Openreach CEO

The footprint we have in our database currently is 5,640,867 premises passed and this is an increase of 57,000 premises compared to just five days ago. If that pace were to be maintained we would hit the claimed six million in 36 days but there are peaks and troughs in what we can find so much more likely to be more like 48 to 64 days away.

There is good news for some more areas as another 170 locations to the ever growing list of areas that are inline for FTTP roll-outs. Some of the 170 areas are 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, Trowbridge. In total the 170 locations have the potential to cover 1.5 million premises.

We should add to avoid anyone jumping to the wrong conclusion that these 1.5 million are part of the 25 million FTTP premises passed by 2026 goal. Also just because an area or exchange is on one of the announced lists there is no guarantee that any individual property will be served, i.e. there is lots of planning to be done and the builds tend to happen in waves often with the easiest (which also means cheapest) being passed first. Think Broadband