The BT-owned company has announced that it will start rolling out FTTP in a few months in an initial eight cities – Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Leeds, Liverpool, London, and Manchester.
“Openreach needs to prove it can build FTTP at scale for a competitive cost, said Clive Selley, Openreach’s CEO. “Last year, our consultation with industry helped us identify a set of enablers to help us do this. For example, we need a supportive public policy and regulatory environment that encourages infrastructure investment. We need to get the costs of delivering fibre down and ensure that there is demand for and take up of the new FTTP platform.
“We are already making progress for example – we’ve halved the cost of delivering fibre all the way to people’s homes and we’re piloting new ways of working with local government to cut red tape, simplify wayleaves and traffic management. We are also working with our wholesale customers on how to achieve rapid take-up on the new platform and get the incremental revenue needed to help pay for it.”
Cityfibre, which claims to be the “UK’s largest alternative provider of wholesale fibre network infrastructure”, responded to Openreach’s announcement. “As a business founded to deliver a new digital infrastructure platform for the UK, we welcome any contribution, from any source, that supports a drive towards national coverage. Today’s announcement from Openreach is a clear response to competition from CityFibre and other alternative full fibre infrastructure builders,” it said in a statement.
