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[Bowdon]

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2018/08/city-of-london-corp-tackles-openreachs-fttp-wayleave-concerns.html

The City of London Corporation has informed ISPreview.co.uk that they last week sent a letter to the heads of various agencies across the area. This seeks to encourage take-up of ultrafast FTTP broadband and highlights Openreach’s (BT) concern about the challenge of getting access permission from landlords.

London is a key focus for Openreach’s new “Fibre First” programme, which initially aims to roll-out their Gigabit capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based ultrafast broadband ISP technology to cover 3 million UK premises by the end of 2020 (possibly rising to 10 million by c.2025).

As part of this it’s estimated that around 12,000 premises across the the City of London area will be given access to this service during 2018, although at the same time Openreach hasn’t been shy about highlighting some of the obstacles they’ve been facing.

Some of the most tedious issues stem from the often costly challenge of securing permission from landlords to access large buildings (i.e. wayleaves). The City of London Corporation (CoLC) has already done some good work to tackle this by attempting to standardise the process / templates involved, while their agreement with Openreach seeks to deliver FTTP infrastructure at no extra cost to landlords.

Nevertheless Openreach’s CEO, Clive Selley, recently highlighted another problem: “One obstacle we face is with the owners of big buildings … it’s tough in London to work out who owns buildings and contact them, it’s quite unique as its an international city and buildings are owned by people across the planet. I worry that some connections could take years if the building owners don’t come forward.”

In response the Chair of the City of London Corporation’s Policy and Resources Committee, Catherine McGuiness, last week issued a new letter to the heads of various agencies across their patch and called on them to tackle the problems that had been raised.

    Letter Extract

    Configuration of the network has already begun with over half of the City now being enabled for FTTP by the end of July 2018, and the whole of Square Mile being completed by December 2018, with existing ducts being used to ensure fast connections to avoid street works, and no installation costs being apportioned to landlords.

    In order to connect buildings to FTTP, Openreach requires landlord consent in the form of a wayleave, and despite its best endeavours they are finding it difficult engaging landlords to agree access.

    The lack of engagement is a highly frustrating matter for Openreach, having undertook to prioritise the City to make the necessary investment to deliver a wholesale network, but also for the City Corporation given our longstanding advocacy around improving connectivity.

    Without sufficient take up there is a real danger that this opportunity could fall away with Openreach having to concentrate their efforts elsewhere in the UK, given their national roll out plans of FTTP and the delivery targets put in place by Government.

    I would like to request your assistance in cascading this message down to both your asset and portfolio management teams to ensure your clients are fully aware of this new service as a standard provision in buildings. Openreach has developed an “expression of interest” form to allow building owners/agents to request their property to be surveyed for connection. The form can be accessed with other information on FTTP at the following address: www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/fibrebroadband