Openreach has announced its full fibre broadband network is now available to 10 million homes, businesses and public services.
The location of the 10 millionth build is in Ketton, Rutland, and the £15bn infrastructure project aims to provide reliable, fast broadband that responds to the UK’s internet usage doubling in 2020 and increasing year on year since then. More data was downloaded last year than ever before.
Clive Selley, CEO, Openreach, explained, “Today marks a significant milestone in our transformation of the UK’s broadband. Not only will access to full fibre technology improve the speed and reliability of the internet connections used by people, businesses and public services, it also provides us with the infrastructure we need to meet the demands of an increasingly digital world.
“Now we’re focused on the next phase of our build. Our engineers are building rapidly across the country, and we already have plans in place that will see full fibre broadband reach over 25 million premises. We’re excited for the future that full fibre will create for everybody across the UK.”
On the way to reaching this 10 million premises milestone, Openreach made full fibre available to over 9,000 medical facilities and over 13,500 educational facilities.
Full fibre broadband has also been made available to more than 3 million premises in the hardest to reach, typically very rural, parts of the country. Openreach has also made full fibre available to the top 25 areas identified by the Social Mobility Commission as least socially mobile, providing full fibre availability to 409,000 premises in these areas.