South West to benefit from Openreach’s huge broadband upgrade

Openreach engineer in rural location

Openreach has announced today that it is upgrading a further 79 cities, towns and villages in the South West as part of its commercial investment in digital infrastructure across the UK.

People living in Fishponds (Bristol), the Isles of Scilly, Hatherleigh (Devon), Burton Bradstock (Dorset), Moreton-in-Marsh (Gloucestershire), Milverton (Somerset) and Warminster (Wiltshire) and 72 additional locations are next in line for Full Fibre.

They join the more than one million homes and businesses across the region which already have access to the UK’s most reliable broadband technology, thanks to Openreach’s work.

Across the UK, the company has published updated plans to build Full Fibre broadband to a record 517 additional locations – covering a further 2.7[1] million homes and businesses.

[1] Fig refers to expected build in these exchange areas

Martin Williams

Martin Williams, Openreach’s regional director for the South West, said: “This is a huge infrastructure success story across the region. No company is building faster or further in Europe, that we’re aware of.

“We won’t be stopping either. We plan to build even further across the region, to more cities and towns, and our most rural communities.

“And our engineers, of which 3,100 live in the region, are doing this at a rapid pace - despite this being a hugely complex engineering project.

“Our fibre checker has the latest information about our work in your area. It’s also worth noting that upgrades aren’t automatic. Once Full Fibre is available where you live, you’ll need to place an order to get connected and we’ll do the rest!

“Openreach’s network offers the widest choice of providers such as BT, Sky, TalkTalk, Vodafone and Zen – which means people have lots of choice and can get a great deal.”

Openreach in the South West

The work is all part of Openreach’s £15 billion project to upgrade the UK’s broadband infrastructure - making gigabit-capable technology available to 25 million homes and businesses by the end of 2026, including 6.2 million in harder to reach more remote and rural areas.

More than 4.7 million homes and businesses across the UK have already upgraded to Full Fibre and demand continues to flow, with more than 50,000 orders being placed each week.

Openreach has also refreshed its online map and postcode checker to give a clearer, regularly updated view of its plans and progress between now and 2026.

The map now shows the levels of current and future expected full fibre coverage as of today, taking data from all of its build programmes, whilst the postcode checker continues to offer the most personalised view of the connectivity available to an individual home or business.

Further updates will be provided as any additional locations are added in future.

The locations in the South West are:

·       Openreach’s network will help to grow the UK economy by connecting people and businesses;

·       According to research by the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr) the Full Fibre transformation could give a £72bn boost to the output of the UK economy in 2030. This is the equivalent of 294,960 new SMEs being created across the country or adding 25 new businesses in every local council in the UK;

·       This short video explains what Full Fibre technology is;

·       For the most personalised view of an individual home or business, Openreach recommends using its online postcode checker where people can find out the specific Openreach broadband connectivity available at their address.