Openreach announced plans to build ultra-fast, ultra-reliable all-fiber broadband for at least 3 million homes and businesses in some of the most difficult communities in the UK, which means fewer families and businesses need taxpayer subsidies to upgrade.

The company’s updated construction plan is crucial for the UK government to achieve its goal of providing “Gigabit broadband” to 85% of the UK by 2025, and to follow the expansion investment commitment of its parent company BT Group. This means that Openreach will now build all-fiber technology for a total of 25 million locations, including more than 6 million locations in the most difficult-to-service areas of the country.

The plan also includes the extension of the company’s largest ever recruitment campaign. On the basis of the 2,500 jobs announced in December 2020, 1,000 new positions will be added in 2021.

Clive Selley, CEO of Openreach, said: “Building a new broadband network in the UK is a huge challenge. Certain areas of the country will inevitably require public funds. But our expanded construction plan means taxpayer subsidies. It can be limited to families and businesses in the most difficult areas to connect. We hope to see other companies come forward and build in most rural areas. This is an extremely complex national engineering project, second only to HS2 in terms of investment. It will help raise the level of the UK, because the impact of all-fiber broadband extends from increased economic prosperity and international competitiveness to higher employment and environmental benefits. We are also happy to continue to buck the trend and create thousands of jobs for apprentices to start their careers as engineers.”

Openreach has built all-optical fibers faster, lower cost and higher quality than any other company in the UK, and has provided this technology to more than 4.8 million homes and businesses so far.

Openreach is using a series of innovations and technologies to provide world-class construction costs, while a major investment in 11 new regional training centers is helping thousands of new engineers with equipment and skills. Therefore, Openreach believes that, according to its business plan, it can deploy up to 4 million rural and urban sites each year with all-fiber optics (or about 75,000 per week, or about 15,000 per working day).

The new five-year deployment plan includes most households and businesses in approximately 1,100 exchange locations, including markets and coastal towns and small villages throughout the UK. These locations include Kirkwall in the Orkney Islands, Cardigan in Wales, Keswick in Cumbria and Allhallows in Kent.