A sparkling new training centre in Peterborough and 3,000 fresh-faced trainee engineers, 1,600 of which are newly created roles, gives weight to the long-overdue fibre rollout ambitions of Openreach.

Peterborough is the second of twelve new or upgraded training centres across the UK as Openreach continues to scale with plans to hire an 6,500 engineers across the next twelve months. The full-fibre plans are starting to meet acceptable expectations, and it’s about time. Currently, Openreach employs 24,282 field engineers and last year hired 3,500 new engineers.

“Openreach’s publication of clear plans for where, when and how they will be investing in new fibre networks is an important step,” said UK Minister for Digital Margot James. “Long term commitments from the industry like this are very important for local communities who need this kind of guarantee on when they will be able to take advantage of the benefits that fibre can bring.”

“In the last year, we’ve learnt to build at high quality, and at a competitive cost,” said Openreach CEO Clive Selley. “This year, we’ll prove that we can build the network on a vast scale and connect customers seamlessly.”

For the digital economy to run at full pace, fibre connectivity is a must. Openreach are clearly reacting to this idea, though this is hardly novel. Selley and his slumbering cronies should have been aware of this years ago, unless the Spanish, French, Portuguese and Norwegians had access to a secret stash of research it wasn’t sharing with Openreach.

As it currently stands, only 6% of homes and business across the UK have access to full-fibre connectivity. However, this number has more than doubled between 2017 and 2018, according to Ofcom’s Connected Nations 2018 report. This might be progress though the UK should not consider calling itself a leader in the connected economy.

Looking at the full-fibre assault, Openreach is now (or will be in the near future) building in 25 towns, cities and boroughs across the UK as it drives towards its ambition of fibering-up three million homes and businesses by 2020. The team also plan to release figures every three months to increase transparency through the full-fibre rollout.

As part of the government’s Future Telecoms Infrastructure Review, the industry has been set a target to connect 15 million premises to full fibre broadband by 2025 and provide full fibre broadband coverage across all of the UK by 2033. Alongside the increased need to satisfy the connectivity appetite of the ever-demanding consumer, fibre infrastructure will be key to realising the 5G dream.

“Access to fibre broadband is particularly key for UK businesses in the run up-to Brexit, as companies come under even more under pressure to deliver on a global scale,” said Phil Sorsky, VP International Sales at CommScope. “With that in mind, it is critical that everyone across the country has the same access to the opportunities enabled by connectivity.”

Progress is being made, albeit at a slow pace, but at least the UK is staggering towards the finish line.