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BT’s infrastructure arm says backhauling base stations will continue to be its primary role in mobile.
Openreach CEO Clive Selley on Wednesday talked of the importance of using multiple technologies to extend broadband coverage, but mobile will play a limited role for BT’s infrastructure arm.
The company is still connecting 25,000 premises per week to its next-generation network, he said during Total Telecom’s Connected Britain event in London, adding that he views it as Openreach’s duty to connect the parts of the country that other networks can’t reach.
This means taking a flexible approach to infrastructure.
"The U.K. doesn’t lend itself to a single technology," Selley said.
As well as fibre-to-the-x (FTTx), Openreach and BT’s Adastral Park R&D facility are working on technologies like long reach VDSL – which can deliver 10 Mbps broadband up to 3.5 km from the cabinet – and G.fast and XG-Fast, in a bid to upgrade the capability of its copper network.
Over the next four years, Openreach aims to connect up to 10 million premises to G.fast and 2 million to fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP).
"Britain’s digital economy has flourished with this pragmatic, mixed technology approach," Selley said.
It is a technology mix that stops short of mobile though.
Openreach’s parent BT now controls more mobile spectrum than any other operator in the U.K. thanks to its recent acquisition of EE, and it seems that for practical, regulatory, and/or strategic reasons, rolling out base stations and providing wholesale access to that spectrum will continue to be the preserve of its mobile subsidiary.
Spectrum "is not an Openreach concern," Selley told Total Telecom on the sidelines of Connected Britain.
Rather, Openreach’s mobile strategy will continue to centre on delivering backhaul connectivity to cell sites.
"All [U.K.] MNOs are busy building out their networks to meet their coverage obligations," Selley said, providing opportunities to the likes of Openreach.
"As the industry moves towards 5G, the topology of mobile networks is going to change," he said, with operators coming to rely more heavily on small cells, particularly as higher frequencies, including millimetre-wave (mmWave) spectrum, are made available for mobile services.
Selley expects mobile operators to deploy millions of small cells over the coming years.
"Openreach’s role will be to provide backhaul to those sites," he said.
