Openreach is aiming to increase the rate at which it installs Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband capacity, with a goal of reaching 25 million premises by 2025.

In the last year, Openreach, which is the independent fixed access infrastructure arm of BT, attached two million premises with FTTP, a record for the company.

According to the group, it now has the capability to reach around 4 million premises per year. As such, the increase in capacity has given BT the confidence to accelerate its total FTTP build from 20 million to 25 million premises by December 2026.

In addition, the there were other recent developments that led BT and Openreach to accelerate the FTTP rollout. There has been an encouraging take-up of the current FTTP footprint and the positive outcome from the recent 5G spectrum auction. Furthermore, Ofcom’s Wholesale Fixed Telecoms Market Review has provided regulatory clarity on how to rollout FTTP, and the the UK government has recently provided a cash tax super-deduction.

Currently, FTTP broadband is the fastest available option. Conventional broadband, also known as Fibre-to-the-Cabinet, runs on fibreoptic cables to a local cabinet before running on far slower copper wiring up to customers’ premises. FTTP uses fibreoptic cables all the way into a building, ensuring faster internet speeds throughout.

Openreach will now start its ramp up to 4 million premises per year with immediate effect. BT has the capacity to fund this additional build entirely from internal resources while continuing to stand by its other priorities, including investing in 5G and its modernisation programme.

Commenting on this additional FTTP build, BT Group Chief Executive Philip Jansen said: “BT is already building more full fibre broadband to homes and businesses than anyone else in the UK. Today we are increasing our FTTP target from 20 million to 25 million homes and businesses to deliver further value to our shareholders and support the Government’s full fibre ambitions.

“This has three massive benefits: it allows us to go faster, beefing up our capacity to build fibre to households and businesses; it allows us to go further, getting fibre to more people including in rural communities, and; it will help fuel UK economic recovery, with better connectivity and up to 7,000 new jobs.”

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Chair of the Openreach Scotland Board Katie Milligan added: “We’re proud that BT’s increasing its ambition for Openreach.

“We’ve already proved we can build ultrafast and ultra-reliable full fibre broadband to hundreds of thousands of Scottish homes and businesses at pace, and without compromising on quality. We’re also encouraged by the demand we’re seeing and, allied to our experience and innovation in scaling up the build, this gives us confidence that we can reach hundreds of thousands more at world-class cost points.

“Research shows how full fibre can make us more productive, competitive and green as a nation, and it can enable 76,000 people to return to the Scottish workforce, boosting the economy by £ billions.  So we believe the time is right to capitalise on that potential. It’s all systems go for a full fibre future here at Openreach – and across Scotland.”