03
August
2023
|
16:54
Europe/Amsterdam

Full Fibre boosting technology saves £10m in yearly build costs

Rollout of ‘’Subtended Headend’ can deploy a new Full Fibre network three times further and cut build time by up to six months

SHE deployment connecting up village of East ClandonOpenreach, the UK’s largest wholesale broadband network, is rolling out new cost-busting Full Fibre technology – saving £10m in build costs in the last year (Fiscal Year 22/23), while extending Full Fibre broadband to remote communities that were previously out of commercial reach.

The company is deploying ‘SHE’ (Subtended Headend) where new fibre-optic cables can be built out from specially-adapted existing green roadside cabinets. Ultrafast broadband optical signal boosting equipment, normally housed in a main exchange building, is installed at the cabinet.

Engineers have now deployed around 100 individual  ‘SHEs’, across the UK, connecting up around 160,000 homes and businesses that would otherwise have been beyond commercial reach, and avoiding the need to build over 1,262 km of new fibre cabling or ‘spine’.

By ‘piggy-backing’ on the existing VDSL copper based cabinet network in this way – Openreach’s new Full Fibre cables can potentially be extended three times their normal reach, over 200km - with the capacity to connect up to a thousand additional homes and businesses from a single ‘SHE’ location, while cutting up to six months in build time and the costs involved in deploying new fibre cables or ‘spines’ all the way from an exchange to a property.

The technology can also be installed the same way in small remote exchange buildings that are served by a main exchange – helping to extend the reach of Openreach’s Full Fibre network further still.

Openreach’s Chief Engineer, Andy Whale, said: “Openreach has a strong track record of investing more than any other company into rural broadband upgrades. We’re rolling out Full Fibre to reach 25m homes and businesses and a quarter of that – around 6m premises - will be in the hardest to reach third of the country.

“We’ve already built Full Fibre to around half of those harder to reach homes and businesses and this innovation is helping us to build faster and further into these more remote  parts the country – especially in more rural areas,  on a very large scale but more efficiently and at a much lower cost.”

The technology has already transformed a hundred communities across the UK – bringing game-changing ultra-fast, ultra-reliable broadband to hard to reach homes and businesses that had previously been out of reach.

For example,  in the remote Welsh Amman valley, seven SHEs have removed the need for 20 km of fibre cable  ‘spine’ – much of which would’ve been on narrow 60 mph roads. This means the project can be completed two years early, with savings of almost £1 million.

This short video explains what full fibre technology is and people interested in upgrading their broadband can see what’s available in their area by entering their postcode into Openreach’s online fibre checker