Openreach Name 21 New UK Locations for FTTP Broadband Build Plan | ISPreview UK

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Network operator Openreach (BT) has today published an updated build plan for the ongoing roll-out of their Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based gigabit broadband ISP network, which is the first update since December 2024 and adds 21 new locations – covering 80,000 extra UK premises – to their national deployment plan.

Just to recap. The BT Group is currently investing up to £15bn to expand the coverage of their new full fibre network to 25 million premises by December 2026 (here), which will include around 6.2m in rural or semi-rural areas. On top of that, they’ve also expressed an ambition to reach up to 30m by 2030 (there are c. 33m in the UK), which is partly dependent upon a favourable outcome from Ofcom’s next Telecoms Access Review 2026 (TAR).

Openreach has effectively already set their primary roll-out plan to achieve the December 2026 target, which occurred back in May 2024 (here) – this meant that round 3,500 towns, cities, boroughs, villages and hamlets were now included in the build programme (even more if we include their Project Gigabit contracts). Since then, the operator’s build updates have largely focused on reflecting progress and changes that have been made within that existing plan.

The latest June 2025 Build Plan (and map) thus represent somewhat of a process update for the previous update in December 2024, but it also adds another 21 new locations   forming part of their plan to reach up to 5 million more homes and businesses during the year to March 2026 (up from 4.3m added in the prior year). Not to mention that this also partly reflects Openreach’s recent move to accelerate its roll-out by 20% (here).

List of the 21 new build exchanges

However, we don’t currently expect Openreach to announce a much bigger list of new UK build locations or coverage expansions, such as for their future plan for going from 25m to 30 million premises by 2030, until after Ofcom have published their final telecoms market review proposals – due later this year (implementation from April 2026). For an operator of Openreach’s size, the addition of 80,000 premises to their existing plan is relatively small.

Clive Selley, CEO of Openreach, said:

“This is a UK infrastructure success story, so it makes sense for us, and the country, to push hard on the accelerator pedal. Our new network is helping to drive economic growth, create jobs, and will be the backbone of a prosperous, globally connected and competitive UK.

Last year was our biggest year of build ever – reaching well over four million homes with this life changing technology. No other builder across Europe has achieved that kind of build rate and this year will be our biggest ever.”

Openreach currently has 15,000 people focused on their UK deployment of full fibre technology and the average per premises build cost continues to hover around the £280 mark (roughly £1.2bn per year). The new service, 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 providers have started to do free automatic upgrades as older copper-based services and lines are slowly withdrawn.

Finally, Openreach’s top consumer FTTP home broadband speed is currently 1800Mbps or 1.8Gbps (120Mbps upload), although the operator will shortly begin to trial their new 10Gbps capable XGS-PON network (here) and recently hinted at real-world symmetric speeds of up to 3.3Gbps being possible for their future setup (here).