London 2012 - our role

As the official Telecommunications Infrastructure Partner, Openreach is proud to be playing a leading role in making these Games a success.

We will be connecting the 94+ UK Games locations and will also help to keep the 14,700 athletes in touch with friends and family in 205 countries and do the same for the estimated 500,000 additional visitors to the UK.

Our services will support London 2012's broadcast services, enabling billons of people across the planet to see images sent from key venues in the Olympic Park, such as the Olympic Stadium, the Velodrome, the wave shaped Aquatics Centre, the International Broadcast Centre and the Media Press Centre, throughout the duration of the Games.

The communications infrastructure provided by Openreach will cover the UK. As well as the Olympic Park in Stratford, East London on a site the size of 357 football pitches there are 21 other venues stretching from Glasgow to Weymouth and taking in Newcastle, Manchester, Cardiff and Coventry as well.

Sustainability and community commitment
Openreach people are making a fantastic contribution to London 2012 through a range of internal volunteering programmes, helping young people and local communities in and around East London. We are getting involved in other areas of the programme too. We are working with the children's charity I CAN to deliver The Communication Triathlon, a fantastic initiative designed to help young children develop their speaking and listening skills.

For more details on The Communication Triathlon please see here.

As a Sustainability Partner for the London Olympic and Paralympic Games, we are also working to ensure that we minimise the environmental impact of our involvement. We have set ourselves some ambitious targets such as challenging our engineers out and about to achieve a 10% reduction in average fuel used per working hour. This will help the environment and, at the same time, encourage better driving.

2012 and beyond
For Openreach, delivering the core communications infrastructure for London 2012 is a fundamental requirement. It is taking a huge team effort to successfully put in place the services to make this happen, but we have the resources, the equipment, and the people, and are certainly up to the challenge.

A key part of our role involves working with the Olympic Delivery Authority and other organisations to ensure the London 2012 venues have the communications network of the future. Our deployment of Superfast Fibre Access for the Olympic Village and across the country will benefit the Games and leave a lasting legacy for residents, both existing and new, as well as businesses that can benefit from these technologies long after 2012. 

Countdown to London 2012  

We'll do all we can to help our customers make the most of the opportunities the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games present and to gain a better understanding of the impacts for you and your own customers. We’ll continue to keep you updated on our plans and progress.

We’ve launched a programme of information called Countdown to London 2012 for our customers. Every two months up to the Games, we’ll issue a customer newsletter, along with a slide pack and other information covering what you need to know about what's happening in the run up to this exciting event.

All editions of the newsletter, along with the latest customer information that we have also published so far for Countdown London 2012, can be found below.