Broadband wholesaler BT Openreach has announced its plans to build Ultrafast Full Fibre in 517 new locations across the UK, covering an additional 2.7 million homes and businesses.
This new tranche of locations includes 400,000 premises in hard-to-reach rural locations including Tobermory in Scotland, Haworth in West Yorkshire, Saundersfoot in South Wales and Pinxton in Derbyshire. More accessible sites also include Harlow in Essex and Southampton in Hampshire.
Openreach boss Clive Selley said in a press statement: "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.”
Openreach plans to make gigabit-capable technology available to 25 million homes and businesses by the end of 2026, including 6.2 million in rural areas. The wholesaler has a 30 million-premises target for 2030.
Ultrafast Full Fibre requires new fibre optic cables to be laid to the premises, while gigabit-capable technology can include a variety of methods, some of which utilise existing infrastructure.
Openreach, accessible via ISPs including BT, Vodafone, EE and hundreds of others, is currently connected to 14 million premises.