Openreach plans for my area

Hello everyone.Having recently moving home I would love to get any info on when OR may install servi es to my area. All I know so far is my December 2026! Jeez.....
Thanks all.
Postcode is NN188ST

Nothing we can do about it. My area the same as you. Not Available, Not Planned. Until December 2026 but I think it will push back date until 2030 if Openreach want it.

Can you not get Virgin Media (XGS) and OFNL based FTTP service at that postcode?

Brackley (NN13) is listed as 'before December 2026' and they were working before Christmas to clear ducts and had pushed some fibre. But of course despite what the postcode suggests we're a long way south of you and I doubt it's the same engineering team.

Edited by Andrue (Thu 02-Jan-25 21:50:16)

Unfortunately it may be the only option untill openreach can duct the fibre and make the connection

Choice of two FTTP networks + FTTC. To be fair that’s doing alright 😉

They’ll get around to you sooner or later.

OR is currently doing corby now. Virgin media is upgrading around your area as well.

The Openreach website does not show your postcode as a plan for 2026 but it can change at any time. It simply means you may not get it by December 2026. But then I've seen surprises where it shows no plan and people get upgraded earlier or unexpectedly compared to some that do show as planned.

However, I found out that you have OFNL and nexfibre available both of, which are wholesale FTTP providers.
https://checker.ofcom.org.uk/en-gb/broadband-coverag...

These are the ISPs you can choose from https://www.ofnl.co.uk/residential-internet-service-...

You also have Virgin Media Gig2 available. VM is currently the only provider available on the nexfibre network.

Open Fibre Networks tend to be some of the most expensive packages that I've seen based on comparisons. Every ISP on OFNL gives a worse deal compared to any ISP on Openreach, CityFibre or any other Altnet. Even Virgin Media has better deals than OFNL.

Indeed Openreach is a far better choice but we don't know when they'll roll out. Most of us don't have the power to influence what FTTP provider will come to our area. We get given whatever is provided and we don't have much of a choice.

If you have two or more workable options, then you can take an introductory deal from one provider, switch to the other after 2 years, rinse and repeat.

Thankyou all for your replies. It is very much appreciated . Thanks.

I'm in a similar situation. I'm just down the road from you in Oakham. Openreach say Dec 2026. Currently on FTTC with Zen and would ideally like to stay with them. Virgin is available via the former UPP FTTP network but I don't like the way the price explodes after the contract period. eg the M500 broadband only is £33p/m. After the 18 month ends it shoots up to £72!

In reply to a post by No_One:

Virgin is available via the former UPP FTTP network but I don't like the way the price explodes after the contract period. eg the M500 broadband only is £33p/m. After the 18 month ends it shoots up to £72!

^^ This is the reason why I will NEVER go with VM!

In reply to a post by adslmax:

^^ This is the reason why I will NEVER go with VM!

Some of us don't have a choice. Slow FTTC or VM are my only choices. Two altnet's in road, neither permitted access to my flat. C'est la vie.

The workaround is to sign up again for 18months, that brings the price back down.

Yep. As pointed out already, the OP has XGS-PON available from Virgin media as well as fibre from OFNL and Openreach FTTC.

So yeah not having Openreach FTTP, immediately, is very much a first world issue.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

If you have two or more workable options, then you can take an introductory deal from one provider, switch to the other after 2 years, rinse and repeat.

Generally speaking that is correct and the way to go! That's something I have in mind as I have Community Fibre here and they offer 1Gbps for £25. I could go up to say around £35 a month with Virgin Media if the price jumps.

But I don't know with nexfibre what the prices will be like when more wholesale networks join. If it becomes like OFNL then it will be a big disappointment.

But there are some providers that are so expensive that their introductory offer is the equivalent of the price hike at the end of the contract!

This especially applies to the OP with OFNL. They are basically extortionists, to describe them in a word!
I've had a look at some comparisons and you simply can't choose anything decent for under £30 a month.

2 examples you see here with OFNL. https://www.mthnetworks.com/internet-ofnl/

MTH Networks OFNL package

900 Mbps
900/900

Download - 900Mbps
Upload - 900Mbps
Unlimited Bandwidth
Full UK Based Support
Prices Locked In Contract

£57 | month

But symmetric service via Freedom Fibre Network gives dramatically lower prices! https://www.mthnetworks.com/internet-freedom/

1000 Mbps
1000/1000

Download - 1000Mbps
Upload - 1000Mbps
Unlimited Bandwidth
Full UK Based Support
Prices Locked In Contract
24 month contract

£33.60 | month

Second example with Rocket Fibre OFNL

https://www.rocket-fibre.co.uk/residential-broadband...

900 Mbps
450 Mbps upload
£57.75/Monthly

VS Rocket Fibre CityFibre https://www.rocket-fibre.co.uk/residential-broadband...

Black Friday 1GB
1 Gbps Download and Upload
£28.00/Monthly

You have to pay around £55-£60 a month for the same 1Gbps via OFNL, while you'll get symmetric 1Gbps around £25-33 using any other Altnet via Freedom Fibre, CityFibre and even Openreach FTTP is more reasonably priced.

It's like a postcode lottery, your price offers depend on what you have in your area. If you have the worst providers like OFNL I'm not sure what special introductory deal you can get as all their ISPs are similarly priced. They also lack all the major providers like BT, Sky, TalkTalk, Vodafone, Zen, etc.

Even in London you will find there are housing associations like Poplar Harca who have an exclusive deal agreement with OFNL. There's no Openreach copper, Hyperoptic, Community Fibre, etc in places like Balfron Tower E14 0UY. Residents are stuck with only OFNL! I feel sorry for these residents as they don't have any choice as all the copper has been removed from their tower as part of refurbishment.

I feel that just having 1 cheap Altnet is far better than having an expensive wholesale network like OFNL. But we don't have a choice to choose who builds in our area. Even I couldn't convince my management for Hyperoptic 10 years ago. Never did I ask for Virgin Media but that's their choice, they decided to agree in rolling this out but that would never have been my top picks as they are generally more expensive but still cheaper than OFNL offers.

I wished I had CityFibre as a choice here but I know they don't build in London. They are cheaper than Openreach. But I know Openreach FTTP is far more likely to come here in future and that's my hope unless nexfibre surprises me and offers wholesale prices that are similarly competitive to Openreach.

Edited by BLaZiNgSPEED (Sat 04-Jan-25 14:43:08)

In reply to a post by BLaZiNgSPEED:

I've had a look at some comparisons and you simply can't choose anything decent for under £30 a month.

2 examples you see here with OFNL. https://www.mthnetworks.com/internet-ofnl/

MTH Networks OFNL package

900 Mbps
900/900

Download - 900Mbps
Upload - 900Mbps
Unlimited Bandwidth
Full UK Based Support
Prices Locked In Contract

£57 | month

That's not out of the ballpark. For a good quality Openreach-based provider, I'd expect to pay ~£55 per month for 1000/120. Anyone who claims a headline price significantly lower than that is likely hiding the true price via in-contract price rises. (For example, EE starts at £45, which becomes £48 then £51 by the end of the contract)

Altnets doing deals at £30 are all very well if you have them available, but not everyone does. Of course, if you can, you should take advantage - while they are burning their venture capital!

In reply to a post by BLaZiNgSPEED:

Even in London you will find there are housing associations like Poplar Harca who have an exclusive deal agreement with OFNL.

There are some housing estates in Fleet, Hampshire, where entire roads are OFNL only, no Openreach or Virgin Media. My block of flats is owned with the MTVH housing association whom don't enter into correspondance over broadband provision. They seem to be mentally stuck in the "BT provides all" idea.. (No Openreach FTTP in this town yet).

I also would have liked CityFibre to built in the area, but my road has F&W (Hey! Broadband) and toob, but neither can get dialogue with MTVH so it doesn't matter whom is outside if the building owner refuses to enter into conversation.

In reply to a post by BLaZiNgSPEED:

It's like a postcode lottery, your price offers depend on what you have in your area....

Even in London you will find there are housing associations like Poplar Harca who have an exclusive deal agreement with OFNL. There's no Openreach copper, Hyperoptic, Community Fibre, etc in places like Balfron Tower E14 0UY. Residents are stuck with only OFNL! I feel sorry for these residents as they don't have any choice as all the copper has been removed from their tower as part of refurbishment.
...

I wished I had CityFibre as a choice here but I know they don't build in London....

I can understand the dilemma from some landlords and building owners not wanting duplicated fibre infrastructure from every wholesale or retail fibre network being run to each and every flat/apartment. Bundles upon bundles of separate fibres to each and every dwelling from every provider. Nightmare.

However it's staggered me, that to date, no one has been able to come up with a pretty simple and workable solution; which is to have a single or pair of fibres, perhaps owned by the community / housing association / whatever - to every dwelling cabled back to a central patch panel in a common rack.

Each network provider can then install their own fibre terminations up to the same rack.

Its matter then of simply patching one to the other. Dead easy.

Admittedly there would be some overhead in administration and perhaps security - but overall this would enable any fibre network to run its spine right into the main building central fibre patching space and simply patch out to subscribers from there.

Too simple and straightforward perhaps, or the wine is just speaking to me tonight 🍷🤣

Edited by Pheasant (Sat 04-Jan-25 23:47:28)

A simple solution for sure.

But the cost of the installation would surely be upon the community/housing association, or the flat management scheme, etc. And that means folk putting their hands in their pockets.
A very large percentage of the population still believe this stuff should happen FOC, and all they will pay is tuppence ha’penny for huge bandwidth.

Not sure what the answer is, but people seem unwilling to pay for it.

Yeah it was just thinking out loud, rather than anything else.

I suppose from a ‘who’s going to pay’ perspective - if each fibre network / provider is already paying or prepared to pay to do internal / within private property installation (very expensive), then doing what I propose, removes the need for that (or at least part of that) expenditure for the network.

If the owner’s cooperative / tenancy association / etc have incurred the cost for providing dark fibre from the central location to each dwelling, then they could levy an access charge of some sort - perhaps a one off flat fee. That may not necessarily cover all the install costs they incurred by one paying fibre provider, but if there are two or three or more fibre providers then perhaps it starts to make more sense economically.

Residents get a choice of fibre provider networks and its removed the need to have complete duplication in distribution fibre across all the premises.

Ideal world stuff of course….

It's been done before.

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2024/01/comple...

I think we are too far down the road for that. There will be problems around liability and how automatic compensation scheme works around delays due to who owns what part of the network. Can't see too many landlords wanting to get involved with telecoms.

Interesting. Thanks. 🙏

Probably yeah. Just thinking out loud after one too many sherries last night 😅

Maybe if *Openreach* were allowed to install fibre inside all MDUs, but other operators who came up to the distribution frame were permitted to plug into it and rent at cost (PIA-style), it could work.

That would also solve the issue of Altnets throwing their toys out of the pram if OR gets the automatic right to upgrade copper to fibre in MDUs:

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2024/04/openre...

In reply to a post by candlerb:

Maybe if *Openreach* were allowed to install fibre inside all MDUs, but other operators who came up to the distribution frame were permitted to plug into it and rent at cost (PIA-style), it could work.

Maybe it would work in the large tower blocks, but my housing assoc has quite a lot of smaller blocks, there isn't any such infrastructure in these buildings for shared cabling (or space to add anything).

Even trying to upgrade the openreach 1970s copper I assume would be an abandon and fit externally.

Indeed. That’s in essence the the good old “dark fibre to the premises” (can I lay claim to the acronym DFTP 😜) model we’ve discussed on here from time to time. Just pushed out farther into the network rather than a distribution frame at the exchange.

As @witchunt says, perhaps that has passed us by now. Well I know it has really.

In my minds eye I was imaging a multi story tower block (perhaps a bit less Singapore-esque than the Canary Wharf towers in the link above) configuration.

But I realise there are dozens, if not hundreds of permutations and combinations that fall under the “MDU” umbrella. It’s an extremely broad church and incredibly diverse to try and capture it all within a single ‘solution’. Very challenging.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

In my minds eye I was imaging a multi story tower block (perhaps a bit less Singapore-esque than the Canary Wharf towers in the link above) configuration.

The big cities have these of course, and they will have facilities rooms/cupboards just for the electrics nevermind lifts etc.

But I realise there are dozens, if not hundreds of permutations and combinations that fall under the “MDU” umbrella. It’s an extremely broad church and incredibly diverse to try and capture it all within a single ‘solution’. Very challenging.

From the purpose built small blocks (2 and 3 story) without any lift, or shared infrastructure, to the large victorian home conversions that include corporate office style structured cabling, I'm sure every combination is out there.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

In reply to a post by BLaZiNgSPEED:

I've had a look at some comparisons and you simply can't choose anything decent for under £30 a month.

2 examples you see here with OFNL. https://www.mthnetworks.com/internet-ofnl/

MTH Networks OFNL package

900 Mbps
900/900

Download - 900Mbps
Upload - 900Mbps
Unlimited Bandwidth
Full UK Based Support
Prices Locked In Contract

£57 | month

That's not out of the ballpark. For a good quality Openreach-based provider, I'd expect to pay ~£55 per month for 1000/120. Anyone who claims a headline price significantly lower than that is likely hiding the true price via in-contract price rises. (For example, EE starts at £45, which becomes £48 then £51 by the end of the contract)

Altnets doing deals at £30 are all very well if you have them available, but not everyone does. Of course, if you can, you should take advantage - while they are burning their venture capital!

Well actually after doing some searching I found out that Vodafone are offering 1000/120 for £36 a month with £85 voucher, which is basically the equivalent of £32.46!

Vodafone
Online exclusive Full Fibre 910
New customers only Offer Ends 06/01/2025 Price locked until April 2025
£85 voucher

920Mb-1000Mb expected speed

No setup costs

24 month contract

£36.00
per month

(Prices may change during contract)
£32.46
Avg. monthly cost


Onestream
Hyperstream Full Fibre 1000
New customers only Router price not included. Router rental from £4.95 per month

920Mb-1000Mb expected speed

No setup costs

24 month contract

£28.00
per month

(Prices may change during contract)
£28.00
Avg. monthly cost

And here I also found Onestream doing 1Gbps for £28 a month! Even I am surprised to see this and that's also under Openreach. Ok, this does not include router. I'm ok with that, at least I can buy a high end router.

Their 200Mbps is £20 and 150Mbps is £18 a month. Similarly Vodafone are offering 200Mbps £21.88 Avg. monthly cost with the £75 voucher.

These offers I'll certainly accept as best alternatives if Openreach FTTP became available. Now maybe they are not good quality or trustworthy Openreach providers but if it is FTTP it can't be a big mistake.

But the same cannot be said if I had OFNL. Even if we ignored the gigabit packages and only concentrated on basic 80/20Mbps these cost £31.80. With 40/10 starting at £28.20 with MTH Networks and Merula it is £30 for 40/10 and £32.99 for 80/20. It's not like I'm intentionally picking them as the most expensive. There's simply no cheap ISP on OFNL that can give you £20-25 a month deal even for basic 40-100Mbps packages.

OFNL are probably the most expensive wholesale network provider in the UK. I'd be very much interested to know if there are some more expensive providers compared to them. It is no surprise that the OP wants to know when Openreach will become available.

Even if we were to concentrate only on Wholesale Altnets you will find that you get reasonable prices that won't break your bank anywhere under Openreach, CityFibre, Freedom Fibre and Netomnia. All offering packages for around £20 a month. The contract price hikes will indeed increase but at least there's some hope of finding a new deal at the end of the contract. Also, if it jumps only by a few quid then that's also fine by me.

But what is not fine is having to pay £35 per month for 100Mbps, which is what OFNL are doing with all their ISPs! That's unacceptable considering that they don't even appear anywhere in Uswitch, MoneySuperMarket, Go.Compare, etc so you won't even get vouchers included. They are supposed to be Ofcom regulated but their prices are anything but.

In reply to a post by BLaZiNgSPEED:

Well actually after doing some searching I found out that Vodafone are offering 1000/120 for £36 a month with £85 voucher, which is basically the equivalent of £32.46!

I did specify a *good quality* Openreach-based provider

If you're lucky and it works, then fine, but search the forums for examples of people who have had hell from Vodafone.

Also, "Price locked until April 2025" is a really odious way of saying "Price will rise in April 2025"

Who gave the "average monthly cost" of 32.46? It's wrong. It is calculated assuming that the price does not rise at all:
(36*24-85)/24 = 32.46

However, that's not the case - it increases by £3 every April. If that figure was supplied by Vodafone then they need to be reported to ASA and/or Ofcom. If it came from a price comparison site then they ought to know better.

I calculate the average cost as:
(36*4+39*12+42*8-85)/24 = 35.96

Edited by candlerb (Sun 05-Jan-25 20:43:10)

Yes, indeed this is coming from price comparing websites namely MoneySuperMarket, BroadbandChoices and Broadband Genie they are factoring in the voucher as part of the total cost at the end of the contract and the monthly price equation.

Of-course you are right that if the price does not rise then the sum will be correct. From the price comparisons different ISPs are promising different things.

Some of them will show Price could change during your contract, No mid-contract price rises, and for Vodafone it will show Increases annually on 1 April by £3.00.

Looking at Onestream they claim "Annual Price Increase: Starting in 2026, your monthly price will increase by £2.75 every year on 1st April."

The important thing here is whether the price will only increase by £3 or whether there will be a much bigger increase during the mid contract?
This is what happened with me when I was with TalkTalk during the 24 month contract the price went up from £21.75 for 80/20 to £23, £28 and eventually after the 24 months it jumped to £40 without any notice. I found this in my bill history there were no warnings whatsoever. I tried to haggle with them on the phone and they said they can only do £28pm for 18 months if I re-contract and no cheaper than that.

This is when I looked into social tariffs over 2 years ago and found BT Home Essentials 2 offering 80/20 for £20 a month with Digital Voice included for free.

At that time I received a letter that Community Fibre was coming soon and I was thinking that if I tie myself in a contract with FTTC then I may be charged early exit fee. But social tariffs do not punish you for early exit fee or price hike.

Funny thing is that a few days later I received a letter by post from TalkTalk offering me the price match to £20 a month if I cancel BT within 14 days! Of-course I was never going to agree to do that. They had the opportunity to keep me as a customer before that and they refused.

Here I am for 2 years and 6 months with BT and they have only charged me £20 every month. Social tariff deals don't price hike or include the April cost increases. I have been very happy with the service no drop-outs for over 170 days (connection up-time), this is the best service I have ever had!

For most people including myself gigabit speeds are a bonus to have but more importantly is having a service that is reliable and isn't too expensive! I didn't have that reliability when I was on ADSL EO Line. Openreach FTTP at one point was showing as a plan in 2018 but my management refused wayleave and it then reverted to FTTC and I got upgraded in October 2019.

Many of us still don't have a choice what service we will get while some will downright not agree to give wayleave for a single FTTP provider at all or even install the service even if wayleave isn't the problem like in rural areas.

I still count myself as lucky to have FTTC, Community Fibre and now VM via nexfibre. But Virgin Media is not something I would consider as a second Altnet unless nexfibre promises better wholesale packages.