Jack Brereton MP gets stuck in with Openreach’s broadband build
Stoke-on-Trent South MP Jack Brereton has visited Openreach engineers to witness first-hand the innovative engineering techniques being used to deliver Ultrafast Full Fibre broadband across his constituency.
He was given a tour of the work, which is making faster and more reliable full fibre broadband available to homes and businesses in the local area and has already reached more than 600,000 premises across the West Midlands.
Meeting with the MP, the local Openreach team were able to explain how the build in urban areas is happening alongside rural work, highlighting a number of recent announcements covering hundreds of thousands of local premises that are next in line to get full fibre broadband.
Jack Brereton MP visited the local telephone exchange in Newcastle-under-Lyme to look at where the Openreach network for the city starts. He was able speak with engineers working there, find out more about how full fibre is future-proofing connections for many years to come, and even got to try his hand at joining two bits of fibre cable together.
Then it was on to local new Fortior Homes Seddon housing development in Fenton, where the MP was able to witness first-hand how engineers are playing a key role by providing Ultrafast full fibre connections to lots of new homes.
MP Jack Brereton said: “I was pleased to meet with our local Openreach team and have a look at the work they are doing to improve broadband connectivity across Stoke-on-Trent. It was also a useful opportunity for me to pass on feedback from local residents around things they’d like to see done in the future.
“I visited the local exchange, met the local engineers who took me through all the hard work they’re doing to upgrade the network. I was even given the chance to join two pieces of fibre together! We then spent time at the new Fortior Homes Seddon development in Fenton. This was a great chance to see an active build and the installation of a new full fibre network to the new houses and apartments locally.”
The visit was hosted by Kasam Hussain, partnership director for Openreach in the Midlands, who said: “We welcomed the opportunity to give Jack Brereton MP a step-by-step demonstration of our technology. Our engineers work hard every day to keep communities across Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire and the wider West Midlands region connected, and it was great to be able to share the challenges and realities of delivering this technology.”
Openreach is building full fibre faster, at lower cost and higher quality than anyone else in the UK, having reached more than 7 million homes and business so far.
With download speeds of 1 Gbps, it’s up to 10 times faster than the average home broadband connection. That means faster game downloads, better quality video calls and higher resolution movie streaming.
You can also use multiple devices at once without experiencing slowdown – so more people in your household can get online at once. Even if the rest of your family are making video calls, streaming box sets or gaming online, all at the same time – you won’t experience stuttering, buffering or dropouts.
Full fibre is also less affected by peak time congestion – so you can enjoy your Saturday night blockbuster in 4K without the dreaded buffering screen.
Openreach is working to build and connect customers to the company’s ultrafast, ultra-reliable Full Fibre broadband network - which is on track to reach 25 million homes and businesses by December 2026.
Openreach employs more than 3,200 people across the West Midlands and in February announced plans to recruit a create and fill a further 300 jobs.
This short video explains what Full Fibre technology is and you can find out more about our Fibre First programme, latest availability and local plans here.
