Openreach, the wholesale arm of BT (NYSE: BT) that runs the telco's last mile network, confirmed this week that its fiber network has passed 25 million homes in the United Kingdom. About 4 million of the 25 million premises have been reached as a result of the government's Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) program.
Since it began building out the Openreach fiber network in July 2009, the company has been passing over 70,000 premises on average every week.
Over the nearly seven years that this Openreach program has been in place, the company's engineers have upgraded over 4,700 telephone exchanges and installed tens of thousands of remote terminal cabinets across the country to deliver service to homes and businesses. Openreach estimates its engineers have spent more than 10 million man hours rolling out fiber. But the company is not stopping with this milestone. By the year 2020 Openreach plans to deliver ultrafast speeds to 10 million premises and to the majority of the UK within a decade. The service provider will achieve this goal using a mix of G.fast technology and fiber to the premises (FTTP) technology. Release