News
3,000 premises on 14 housing developments to get up to 80-Mbps broadband
Openreach this week partnered with housebuilder Redrow Homes to co-fund the deployment of fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) to 3,000 premises.
The networks will be rolled out to 14 existing Redrow housing developments in Wales and six counties in England (see below for the full list of locations). The first networks are due to come online in early October, boosting peak speeds to up to 80 Mbps from less than 2 Mbps.
"The success of this agreement shows the power of working together in partnership to find a solution to make high-speed broadband available for these customers," said Kim Mears, managing director of infrastructure delivery at Openreach, in a statement on Tuesday.
Going forward, housing developments of 30 properties or more will be connected to FTTH networks automatically at no cost to the housebuilder, thanks to an agreement between the U.K. government, Openreach, and the Home Builders Federation. The 14 developments covered by this week’s announcement were built before the agreement took effect.
"When the homes at these sites were first planned, they were not within the scope of any commercial or government investment plans for fibre broadband. We saw the potential of a national co-funding agreement with Openreach for homes we’d previously built that had lower than average broadband speeds. We wanted to improve our customers’ experience in homes that don’t have the benefit of full fibre technology," explained John Tutte, CEO of Redrow Homes.
"We are open to replicating this approach with other developers by looking with them at their developments over the past few years, and offering a competitive cost where they want to improve the broadband speeds of customers they have sold houses to," Mears added.
Full list of locations:
Rowley Regis, West Midlands
Dunchurch, Warwickshire
Hinckley, Leicestershire
Leicester, Leicestershire
Dawlish, Devon
Exeter, Devon
Harrogate, Yorkshire
Horsforth Vale, Yorkshire
Elmet, Yorkshire
Treharris, Wales
Wenvoe, Wales
Newton Kyme, Yorkshire
Bognor Regis, West Sussex
