Network access provider Openreach (BT) has today announced that they’ve started to deploy their 1.8Gbps speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband ISP network across the south coast city of Portsmouth (Hampshire, UK), although it’s unclear exactly how many premises will benefit, but it is “expected to reach the majority” of properties.
The work, which is expected to take around 2 years to complete, forms part of the operator’s wider deployment of full fibre connectivity, which has already covered nearly 16 million UK premises, and they’re investing up to £15bn to hit 25m by December 2026 (here), before reaching up to 30 million by 2030.
Openreach has actually had a small amount of FTTP coverage in the city for several years, although the new deployment will clearly be much more significant. The catch is that Portsmouth already has significant coverage from several gigabit-capable rivals, such as Virgin Media and CityFibre. In addition, Glide has a modest deployment in the city, while both OFNL and Hyperoptic have a fairly small presence.
Martin Williams, Openreach Partnership Director, said:
“We’re bringing ultrafast broadband to Portsmouth and letting local people know what to expect. This is a major infrastructure upgrade, so there will be more engineering teams, equipment and vans around town, and we’re working hard to keep disruption to a minimum.
Wherever possible, we’ll use our existing network of ducts and poles to avoid roadworks, new street furniture and disturbance. But there may be places where we need to install new poles, underground ducts and fibre cables because it’s the only way to make sure households get included in the upgrade.”
The service itself, once live, can be ordered via various ISPs, such as BT, Sky Broadband, TalkTalk, Vodafone and many more (Openreach FTTP ISP Choices) – it is not currently an automatic upgrade, although some ISPs (e.g. TalkTalk) have now started to do free automatic upgrades as older copper-based services and lines are slowly withdrawn.