17 May 2018

First London City premises connects to Openreach FTTP

BT Openreach's Fibre First programme has connected to its first office building in the City of London, 21 Whitefriars Street. According to the Corporation of London, 12,000 more buildings will be given access to the fibre-to-the-premises service across the course of this year.

Speaking of the roll-out, Catherine McGuinness, chairman of the City of London Corporation’s policy and resources committee, said: "With many City businesses now demanding faster speeds, I am so pleased to have ‘plugged-in' the first City office building to FTTP.

"As a world-leading business district, 99 per cent of City firms are SMEs, and futureproofing our digital services is a priority, particularly in the wake of the UK’s vote to leave the EU.”

Clive Selley, Openreach CEO said: "We’re getting on with the job of delivering full fibre broadband in London. Having a close working relationship with the City of London Corporation helps us to cut down on red tape and deliver more fibre, more quickly and efficiently.

"Our Fibre First programme will see us build an ultrafast FTTP network capable of gigabit speeds that are more than 20 times faster than the current UK average. We plan to make full fibre connections available to three million UK premises by the end of 2020."