Openreach, a subsidiary of BT, is introducing a new offer which encourages Communication Providers (CPs) such as Sky, Vodafone and TalkTalk to upgrade a large proportion of the country’s homes and businesses from mainly copper-based services to fibre.
The offer – which covers its Fibre-to-the-Premises1 (FTTP) and Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) wholesale services – is the result of several months of work and discussions with CPs and gives them access to long-term discounts in return for upgrading their customers from predominantly copper-based services.
The discounts go beyond the regulator Ofcom’s pricing controls on Openreach’s superfast broadband products, and they will allow CPs to encourage more of their customers onto better services. Ultimately it should see the vast majority of Britain’s homes and businesses upgraded onto superfast and ultrafast2 broadband platforms within five years, says Openreach.
So far, 10 million households and businesses have upgraded to superfast broadband on the Openreach network, but such services are available to almost 28 million British premises, according to Openreach.
Clive Selley, CEO, Openreach
We’ve invested more than 11 billion pounds into our network over the last decade and whilst that’s helped the UK become a global digital leader, there are still millions more homes and businesses that could benefit from the better broadband infrastructure we’ve built. This offer is a win/win for Communications Providers, their customers and Openreach.
