New record of 204,301 premises of Openreach FTTP added in last month

Openreach is building lots of FTTP and the rumour is that we can expect announcements of further expansion, though it is possible this is just whispers built up around the expected public release of the latest quarters exchange build lists. 

The last month saw us break the 200,000 premises barrier with 6810 premises of FTTP added on average every day, i.e. 47,670 premises a week or if you prefer 204,301 premises in the month since 12th April 2021.

This means our database as of the morning of 12th May 2021 has a total of 4,231,992 premises passed by Openreach FTTP.

The split between the various categories we use to track the roll-out follows:

• 570,121 premises via BDUK/gap funded or other rural intervention, increase of 4,164
• 2,150,067 premises in Fibre First areas, increase of 89,310
• 429,220 premises in Fibre Town/Village areas, increase of 47,848
• 533,372 premises in new build properties constructed in 2016 and later, increase of 22,601
• 89,505 premises in properties constructed between 2006 and 2015, increase of 6,234
• 138,629 premises in properties constructed between 1996 and 2005, increase of 10,548
• 313,078 premises via commercial/old roll-out, increase of 23,596

An example of the pace of the roll-out is shown by Ayr exchange which in the last week has seen coverage jump from 2.7% Openreach FTTP coverage to 22.1% and no doubt there is more to be found and built. 

If we can keep finding Openreach FTTP at the same sort of rate as the last month they will be growing the footprint by 2.4 million properties a year. This sounds a lot but with an ambition to cover 20 million properties by the mid to late 2020’s the pace needs to continue to rise a bit more to a consistent 230,000 every month.