Openreach Name 517 New UK Locations for FTTP Broadband Rollout

Network operator Openreach (BT) has today announced a HUGE update, which reveals the next batch of 517 new locations – covering 2.7 million UK premises – to benefit from their roll-out of a 1.8Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network. The operator has already covered 14m premises, and this update largely completes their build plan to 2026.

The overall deployment, which is expected to cost up to £15bn and has also already reached around 3.8 million homes in some of the hardest to reach rural areas, is currently running at a build rate of c.78,000 premises per week (here). More than 4.7 million customers have also adopted the service via various different internet providers (more than 50,000 orders are being placed per week), which gives them a strong take-up rate of 34%.

The latest announcement, covering 2.7m additional premises, means that Openreach has now announced enough deployment plans to effectively reach their first goal of 25 million premises in 2026. But there might still be a few smaller additions and changes before they reach the finish line, as is normal for any tentative build plans. Overall, around 3,500 towns, cities, boroughs, villages and hamlets are now included in the build programme.

The new locations also include 400,000 premises in the hardest to reach, most rural parts of the UK (i.e. Ofcom Area 3) with a spread across the UK, including Tobermory in Scotland; Haworth in West Yorkshire; Saundersfoot in South Wales; Pinxton in Derbyshire, Harlow in Essex; Southampton in Hampshire; and Roborough in Devon.

Clive Selley, CEO of Openreach, said:

“This is a UK infrastructure success story. We’re on track and on-budget to make this life-changing broadband technology available to 25 million homes and businesses, and no company is building faster or further in Europe, that we’re aware of.

We won’t be stopping there either. We plan to build right across the UK, from cities and towns to far-flung farms and island communities. Ultimately, we’ll reach as many as 30 million premises by the end of the decade if there’s a supportive political and regulatory environment.

Over time, we’ve learnt to deliver predictably, consistently and at a rapid pace – despite this being a hugely complex national engineering project. That gives us confidence to be even clearer about our build plans, and we want to be as transparent as possible about where and when we’re building. Today we’re publishing more detail than ever about the places we’re building in now, and the communities we’ll be upgrading next.”

The operator’s website is currently in the process of being updated to reflect the latest changes, including via their online map and their latest build plan. The operator typically aims to update the build information on their website at a minimum of every 3 months to adjust timings and add new locations as necessary.

In fact, in this case, Openreach have also made some changes to “give the public a clearer, regularly updated view of its plans and progress between now and 2026“. The map now shows the levels of current and future expected Full Fibre coverage as of today, taking data from all of its major build programmes, whilst the postcode checker continues to offer the most personalised view of the connectivity available to an individual home or business.

One catch with the new map is that it now colours vast swathes of the UK as “green” for places that Openreach says it has “built to, or will be building to, the majority of this area“, which some may view as giving an overly optimistic impression of coverage completion vs the old map.

Otherwise, the service itself, once live, can be ordered via various broadband ISPs, such as BT, EE, Sky Broadband, TalkTalk, Vodafone and many more (Openreach FTTP ISP Choices) – it is not currently an automatic upgrade, although some ISPs are doing free automatic upgrades as older copper-based services and lines are slowly withdrawn.

However, Openreach’s commercial build will still leave some premises unserved by their full fibre network, although many of those should hopefully be tackled by alternative network providers (as is already the case in quite a few areas) and the Government’s £5bn Project Gigabit programme (Openreach have just been named a preferred supplier for future Type C procurements, so there’s more to come).

Finally, Openreach expects to add a total of 4 million extra premises to their UK FTTP coverage across the 2025 financial year (FY25), which will be up from around 3.5m in FY24.

NOTE: Build lists are tentative, which means that some locations may be removed (e.g. if found to be too expensive due to complications) or delayed and others added. Inclusion should NOT be considered as equating to 100% coverage of each area.

List of 517 New Full Fibre Build Locations