Openreach has plugged in full fibre to 100,000 customers in Northern Ireland

BT subsidiary Openreach’s Northern Ireland expansion continues, as it connects it’s 100,000th customer to its 1 Gbps fibre-to-the-premises network.

The company says it is on track to deliver on its target of providing full fibre connectivity to 75 percent of homes and businesses in Northern Ireland by March 2022.

“We feel extremely proud to have connected our 100,000th customer to this life-changing technology,” said Garret Kavanagh, Director of Openreach in Northern Ireland. “Building the next generation of broadband has been and will continue to be transformational for Northern Ireland.

“Our investment in the overall infrastructure of £130 million between 2021 and 2022 will continue to drive the build forward and open up endless opportunities as more and more customers like Hugh and Alison connect to our future-proof broadband network”.

Hugh and Alison Suffern own Tullyraine Veterinary Clinic which was the aforementioned 100,000th property to be connected, if you were wondering why there was a shout out in the corporate quote there. They actually feature prominently in the announcement – Hugh chipped in with:

“After years of poor speeds and reliability which made day-to-day tasks more difficult, access to the latest broadband technology will make a huge difference to us.”

While it might seem a bit out of place even mentioning them, as if Hugh and Alison had just won a lottery grant rather than simply made an IT purchase for their business, it could indicate an attempt to humanise the sales pitch of full fibre as the firm looks to increase uptake, an area where historically advertising terminology has proved troublesome.

Back in May Openreach’s parent BT announced its plans to roll out fibre coverage to 25 million homes in the UK by the end of 2026. This was announced at the same time as a 7 percent decline in revenues for 2020, so the firm is clearly going to want to make as much noise as possible about the gains Openreach has been making in all UK regions with news like this in order to show its been busy fixing this decline.