Openreach nudges another 112 exchange areas toward full fiber

Openreach has added another 112 exchange areas to its full-fiber build plan, extending the reach of its FTTP network deeper into the UK's copper heartland. The update, published without fanfare on the wholesale division's "Fibre Checker" tool this week, brings the total number of exchange areas in some stage of fiber deployment to 1,841 — covering roughly 15.8 million premises passed.

The latest tranche leans heavily into the Midlands and the North. Exchange areas around Nottingham, Derby, Stoke-on-Trent, and parts of South Yorkshire feature prominently. Openreach's standard sequencing — survey, plan, build, connect — means most of these areas will not see live customer orders for 12 to 18 months. But the designation matters: once an exchange area appears on the build list, communication providers can model capacity, plan migrations, and commit marketing spend with regulatory certainty.

This batch also includes 17 exchange areas previously marked "exploring" that have now flipped to "build committed." That status change is the more consequential signal. "Exploring" carries no contractual obligation; Openreach can and does drop areas from that tier when civils costs spike or wayleave negotiations stall. "Build committed" means civils contracts are signed, duct access is secured, and the capital expenditure is locked into the current regulatory period.

The timing is not accidental. Ofcom's Wholesale Fixed Telecoms Market Review (WFTMR) statement, due before year-end, will set the regulatory framework for 2026-2031. Openreach needs to demonstrate build momentum to argue for the pricing headroom that sustains its £15 billion full-fiber ambition. Every exchange area moved from "exploring" to "build" is a data point in that negotiation.

Altnet competitors will read the list differently. CityFibre, Voneus, and the various Project Gigabit vehicles now have 112 new zones where Openreach's duct infrastructure will be occupied by its own fiber first. The physical economics of shared ducts — limited sub-duct space, splice tray contention, and the practical difficulty of over-blowing blown fiber — mean the first mover captures the low-cost path. Altnet builds in these areas now face higher civils costs or forced reliance on Openreach's Physical Infrastructure Access (PIA) product, priced at £1.50 per meter per annum plus one-off charges.

For communication providers, the immediate action item is dataset refresh. The exchange area list feeds into CP ordering systems, eligibility checkers, and the wholesale pre-qualification APIs that underpin consumer-facing postcode checkers. A lag of even two weeks between Openreach's publication and CP system ingestion creates a retail blind spot: customers in newly listed areas see "not available" while the network is already being spliced.

Openreach's build rate has settled into a rhythm of roughly 60,000 premises passed per week — down from the 2022-23 peak but steadier. The 112 exchange areas announced this week represent approximately 420,000 premises, assuming the current average of 3,750 premises per exchange area. At current run-rate, that is seven weeks of build output pre-committed.

The unchanged figure is the "completed" count. Only 1,147 exchange areas show "build complete" — meaning fiber is lit, tested, and wholesale products are orderable. The gap between "build committed" (1,841) and "build complete" (1,147) is the industry's real delivery pipeline. It spans 694 exchange areas, roughly 2.6 million premises, and represents 18 to 24 months of work at current velocity.

Ofcom's Equinox 2 pricing remedy, effective since April, allows Openreach to charge CPs £18.50 per month for a 1 Gbps FTTP circuit — up from £14.50 on copper. The regulator's bet is that higher wholesale margins accelerate build. The 112 new exchange areas are the first tranche added entirely under the new pricing regime. Whether the margin uplift translates to accelerated civils contracts will not be visible until the next quarterly build update.

For now, the list is a planning artifact. But in the UK's fiber economics, planning artifacts are where capital allocation decisions crystallize. The 112 exchange areas now have a regulatory status that makes them bankable. That is the nudge that matters.