Openreach Expands Broadband Network to 81 New Locations

LONDON, UK — Openreach, the UK’s digital network business, announced an extension to its ultra-fast broadband footprint with a plan to make faster, more reliable services available to just over a million homes and businesses in a further 81 locations across the country.

London, Leicester, Manchester, Worthing, Stoke, Birmingham, and Blackpool, are among the 81 locations which make up the next phase of the Openreach build program — over the next nine months — adding to more than 250 locations where the technology has already been deployed.

The multi-million pound investment will make faster, more reliable broadband services available to local residents and businesses, helping to boost local productivity and competitiveness.

Boosting Speeds Up To 330 Mbps
The new Gfast network builds on existing infrastructure and changes the way broadband signals are transmitted from existing street cabinets to boost speeds up to 330 Mbps (seven times today’s UK average), without the need to dig up roads and install new cabling. The increased bandwidth is enough for people to support simultaneous 4K video streams in every room of their house, or to hit download on a film just before leaving home and have it ready to watch on their phone or tablet almost immediately. Gfast is also more reliable than existing technology, using special software that can detect and manage service — affecting issues as soon as they occur.

The new technology will also provide enough additional capacity to support future data-hungry services and applications, such as virtual reality gaming and the smart homes, where a network of online sensors can coordinate and control home appliances – from thermostats, door bells and security cameras to door locks, lawn sprinklers, window blinds and washing machines.

Delivery via Gfast or Fiber
Ultrafast broadband speeds can be delivered using both Gfast and fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) technologies, and this latest announcement complements a wider investment program in future-proof FTTP networks, which is on track to reach three million homes and businesses by the end of 2020. Openreach has already made ultra-fast broadband, using a combination of these technologies, available to more than 1.9 million premises across the UK and has ambitions to go even further.

The business plans to reach a total of 5.7 million properties using Gfast, and also wants to extend its FTTP rollout to 10 million premises by the mid-2020s if the conditions are right to invest.

The company is also continuing to deliver FTTP to rural areas, in partnership with the government, to make sure some of the hardest-to-reach communities in the UK get access to future-proofed, FTTP networks.

People interested in upgrading their broadband to new ultrafast services can see if they’re able to connect by entering their postcode into Openreach’s online fiber checker at www.openreach.co.uk.