FTTH Council Europe Hands Openreach the Full Fibre Operator Award
The FTTH Council Europe‘s annual conference in Vienna (Austria) has today announced the winners of their 2023 awards, which among other things saw national UK network operator Openreach being named as the winner of their ‘FTTH Operator Award‘.
The award is typically given to an operator company that has made a clear decision in favour of deploying full fibre broadband technology in Europe. The winner is typically selected not only based on the size of the network and investment made, but also on factors such as the economic, political and competitive environment for driving the FTTP/H roll-out.
Four awards in total were presented by Eric Festraets, President of the FTTH Council Europe, during the plenary session of the FTTH Conference today, rewarding the outstanding contributions to the well-being of the industry and the acceleration of FTTH deployment in Europe:
The 2023 FTTH Council Award Winners
➤ Fiberhost, Polish open access operator, is the winner of the newly introduced Champion of Diversity Award
➤ Openreach is the winner of the FTTH Operator Award
➤ Mrs. Gerda Meppelink , Senior Expert Politics and Administration at Deutsche Glasfaser, is the winner of the FTTH Individual Award
➤ Heinz Pabisch, Director Section Group Gigabit Fiber Access at CMG-AE, a technology organisation based in Austria, is the winner of the Charles Kao Award
Admittedly, Openreach were rather slow to get the FTTP build rolling in the UK and their deployment programme only really took off in 2018, but there’s also no denying that their £15bn deployment project has so far covered 10 million UK premises (the largest full fibre operator in the market by far) – including 3 million customers – and they’re aiming to reach 25m UK premises by Dec 2026 (80%+ of the UK). Some 6.2 million of those will be in rural and semi-rural areas (3m have already been completed).
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and Linkedin.
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I am sorry but no way in Gods green earth should Openreach have won this over CityFibre. Every major city the local councils have all went with Cityfibre because of the price/service/quality is better than all others. The mobile phone operators for their Fibre backhaul to their 5G have went with CityFibre too.
@Anthony Cityfibre price is certainly better but in my experience service and quality trail Openreach.
No organisation is building as far or as fast as Openreach, that deserves praise.
Are Openreach perfect, hell no but once you get behind the marketing sheen you quickly discover a lot of Altnets are a bit of a mess.
I’m not sure how CityFibre can be mentioned in the same breath as Openreach? If we were to rely on them for FTTP then I very much doubt people like myself who live in a rural area would ever get to enjoy a full fibre connection.
Price/service/quality ‘may’ be better, but their coverage is pretty terrible.
Openreach on the other hand connected me to their FTTP network last March. While the price could be cheaper (that will come in time), I have no issues with the service or quality. I think coverage will quickly move to 85%+ over the next few years.
@JamesP how exactly do you think infrastructure choice and competition arrives in this space? Perhaps your expectation is that CityFibre creates a big bang and suddenly their fibre appears everywhere overnight?
And if you honestly think you’d have FTTP right now without the investment threat of the altnets – some of which are heavily committed to rural areas (e.g. Gigaclear, B4RN) then think again.
Even CityFibre are now extending into villages and are also committing to Project Gigabit – with the Cambridgeshire contract already under their belt).
As a business equipment vendor, I don’t have allegiance to any altnet. I also don’t think all of them are here to stay – nor is that their strategy. But I very much value the impact they are having. I also applaud them for the great progress they have made in building their networks and putting a rocket up the incumbent!
CityFibre’s actions in particular have driven Openreach to do what they should’ve been doing off their own bat well over a decade ago.
As for quality of network… I think the time to really judge that will be much later down the line when it becomes clear that the networks being rolled out by the likes of CityFibre will be far better placed to serve the future. I’ve been lucky enough to spend time with some of the CityFibre network guys and what I see and hear in forethought and forward planning alone should have Openreach very worried indeed. All Openreach can do right now is try to win the fibre land grab and hope for the best. That is why you have FTTP from Openreach today and why one day, you’ll want anything but…
@The balanced view
Openreach is doing what they are doing for a couple of reason, the main one is Alt nets, Openreach had no interest in doing FTTH where I live until we had an Alt net come here, the second reason is, the old network is costing Openreach money to keep going as it is all falling apart. Openreach would have kept things as they were if they could.
“Openreach would have kept things as they were if they could.”
Well that certainly wasn’t their intention in 2010 when they intended to rollout FTTP to 25% of the country, only having to abandon it due the governments intervention in the industry with BDUK. Arguably the UK would have far greater FTTP by now without BDUK , but with far more areas suffering with very low connectivity
Well that’s basically made a mockery of every award the FTTH Council have ever made! Very sad as some of their awards are genuinely well deserved. If anyone believes Openreach – as the inherently lazy and greedy incumbent – would be building any significant amount of fibre in the UK if they hadn’t been shamed into it by their competitors and realised their lunch would be eaten, then you’re sorely mistaken. And, even if judges are fooled by the rollout PR, this award should never be given to a network operator that isn’t even delivering a decent FTTP upload speed. Openreach has a long way to go to earn any respect from me for a fibre job well done.
That Is if they can be bothered to finish my area before 2026 bloody joke
I live in Newcastle. And I have just had the dreaded email today from Openreach saying they can no longer offer FTTP to my street. I knew exactly what the issue was as I posted it on the forum last week and emailed Openreach myself about it. The telegraph poles are being used by CityFibre for FTTP and the copper connections haven’t been removed and there is not enough space in the poles to offer FTTP by openreach and CityFibre unless they remove the old unused copper connections from the pole. Instead they have cancelled FTTP rollout to my street.
There’s an issue at Openreach today, seems a lot of email were sent out accidently saying builds had been cancelled
crazy comment
the copper connections haven’t been removed and there is not enough space in the poles to offer FTTP by openreach and CityFibre unless they remove the old unused copper connections from the pole. Instead they have cancelled FTTP rollout to my street.
so what if you were still an operator selling copper —
clearly you dont understand the telecomms market and how it operates
Nobody in their right mind is going to get it as they have upgraded to FTTP. And our area is going to stop sell in September 2023. The copper cables are worthless for these people.
@Fastman, we have the same problem here, well kind off, the pole outside my house have about 10 houses connected to it via copper and both Openreach and Zzoomm is using it for their FTTP at the moment they have 4 houses connected to it by fibre, and it looks a right mess, two of those cables come across my bedroom window. The copper cables need to go.
Look at all the sore anti openreach complainers
How are we sore if we think a rival is much better?
Like BT said… all end in tears with other rivals by end of the year.
some hilarious comments on this as ever
come off it. I have an openreach line, as a backup to my virgin media. Openreach shouldn’t have won this. They have an unfair advantage for one. Their FTTP program was entirely driven by not wanting to be left behind by others that started to offer it. Lastly, they’re knocking out (in true openreach fashion) the cheapest, oldest form of FTTP with crippled upload speeds. This award is a farce.
I am certainly anti-openreach and I don’t hide it, Openreach should have been separated from BT and sold off.
But it seems as if you don’t want competition from other providers, most of which offers a better network.
City fibre original model was win PSN contracts gain anchor tenants (counil and public building) and then fill in the bits now much bigger rollout — now just a smaller version of openreach
And that is bad as in how? If their goal was to win contracts. And they won them all. And they offered to most of the big cities when others like Openreach wouldn’t. They offered their service at a very low rate. This caused openreach to panic and start mass rolling out to cities to try and catch up. Then they started Equinox to try and undercut them. Why reward Openreach for this?
It’s nice to see all the national pride in a British operator winning a European award.
We’re not blind? If you think openreach is a good FTTP service provider, then, LOL. 1 Gigabit download, 200 up. What are they virgin media? They only install FTTP so they don’t get left behind. They could have fibred up the whole of the UK in the 1990s but they chose not to. It took them another 30 years and a kick up the backside from the altnets to get out there and do it. And, these are the people that spearheaded the whole “copper is actually fibre” marketing.
@Anon – VM started the ‘fibre’ advertising.
really? in which case I retract it, but they were certainly in on it. But I don’t mean to sound like a jerk but can you prove it? otherwise, you know, random comment on a website ..
https://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/3391-asa-rules-on-virgin-fibre-optic-broadband-claims
BT were banned from laying FTTP in the 90’s so it’s hard to see how they could have done it. The ban was to allow cable companies a chance to establish.
I’ve a better chance of openreach doing fttp where I live then virgin or anyone else providing fftp.
Vigin and everyone else is more interested in the easy pickings.