Openreach Open for Business

Containing almost all of BT’s force of field engineers, Openreach has been created to install, provide and maintain “the first mile” of connections, fibres and wiring which link millions of homes and businesses in Britain to their communications providers’ networks via local BT exchanges.

Steve Robertson, Openreach’s chief executive, commented: "We’re up and running. The entire Openreach team is utterly committed to providing Britain’s communication providers with equivalent access to the local access network and to serving all our customers in the same even-handed way. 

“This is an exciting time for the telecoms industry and Openreach has a vital role to play in making sure that Britain’s consumers and businesses have access to the most innovative and competitive communications market in the world. We’re ready to do our bit.”

Openreach’s 25,000 engineers will perform 3.5 million customer visits every year across Britain. 22,000 vans are being re-liveried to carry the new Openreach identity and will be instantly recognisable by the bright multi-coloured waves that stretch the length of each vehicle.

Openreach engineers will install new lines, maintain existing lines, upgrade the local network and maintain the green cabinets at the side of the road. In short, they are the people who help ensure that tens of millions of people across the UK have reliable local access to the telephony and internet services offered by communications providers.

Whilst remaining an important part of BT, Openreach has its own headquarters, distinct identity and around 30,000 people. These people have come primarily from BT Wholesale and BT Retail. The business is the second largest within BT Group by number of employees and has assets of around £8 billion and revenues of more than £4 billion.

Openreach will have its performance under the Undertakings monitored by the newly created Equality of Access Board (EAB). This Board will monitor the delivery of the Undertakings given by BT to Ofcom and will therefore also monitor the performance of BT Wholesale in certain areas. Carl Symon, one of BT's non-executive directors, chairs the Board which has a majority of independent external members.

About Openreach

Q1. What is Openreach?

Openreach is a new BT business specially created to manage BT’s national access and backhaul network – the metaphorical “first mile” where millions of calls, web searches and business deals are started each day.

Q2. Who are Openreach’s customers?

Communications providers – businesses who provide telephony and internet services to homes and businesses. This also includes other parts of BT.

By providing a level playing field on which communications providers can compete, Openreach enables them to deliver innovative and competitive services to people and businesses in Britain.

Q3. Can consumers and businesses buy directly from Openreach?

Our products are the “building blocks” which communications providers use to create their own services. We sell our products to communications providers, which are companies which onward sell telephony and internet services (as opposed to consuming them themselves within their company). Communications providers include, for example, Internet Service Providers, as well as other parts of BT.

Q4. Why ‘Openreach’ as a name?

Openreach was chosen as a symbol of the way we will operate, delivering ubiquitous services on an open and even-handed basis to any and all communications providers, including to BT’s own downstream divisions.

Q5. Is Openreach really going to treat BT like any other customer?

Yes. Openreach will provide exactly the same services at the same prices to BT’s other lines of business in ways that are open, transparent and even-handed and which overcome any suggestion that other parts of BT are favoured at the expense of the interests of Openreach’s customers.

Q6. Why should business and residential customers be interested in this internal BT organisational change?

Because it aims at safeguarding their interests by encouraging the entire communications industry to innovate and to compete more efficiently. The industry will do this by providing homes and businesses with new, exciting and value-for-money services in all areas from new high-speed data business services to television, video, popular and classical music and a host of educational and leisure applications.

This is especially important in this modern era of “broadband” where the potential of high-speed communications is much greater that in the old days of basic voice telephone services. It is therefore much more important that no-one, including companies developing new applications for the technology, and marketing and delivering them to consumers and businesses, is inhibited in their ability to reach customers over the BT network.

Q7. What should people – businesses and residential customers – do if they want to contact Openreach?

There’s no need to contact Openreach directly. Openreach works for all the communications providers which use Openreach’s access and backhaul networks to deliver their own services to end-users. So end-users should just continue dealing with the companies they have chosen to provide them with the services they need. That goes for customers of BT’s own retail divisions (BT Retail and BT Global Services) too.

However, to help reassure consumers and businesses, all Openreach engineers carry identity cards that have a Freefone number on the back if you wish to verify that someone is a legitimate Openreach person.

Q8. How many people and vans will Openreach have?

Openreach will have approximately 30,000 people. Of these, 25,000 will be engineers. These people came almost equally from BT Wholesale and BT Retail. Openreach has more than 22,000 vans (out of a total of 32,000 vans in BT).