The Covid 19 pandemic paved the way for a drastic increase in working from home, the unforeseen outcome of this, is that good – domestic and commercial – broadband connectivity has become crucial to the UK’s economic growth. Internet connectivity affects almost every aspect of everyday life, from work and education to accessing public services and benefits and maintaining social connections. This makes the rapid roll out of Project Gigabit more vital than ever. In this blog we explain how the duct rods Bailey Products manufacture and supply to Openreach are facilitating the rollout of fibre broadband throughout the UK.
Supporting Openreach
Openreach Limited is wholly owned by BT plc, the company maintains the telephone cables, ducts, cabinets and exchanges that connect nearly all homes and businesses in the United Kingdom to the national broadband and telephone network.
As part of its ongoing fibre network rollout, Openreach has now connected six million homes and businesses to its full fibre network. This figure equates to a quarter of its national rollout target, with five years to go.
The Openreach network is the largest in the UK and is used not just by parent company BT to deliver its services, but also by other broadband providers including Sky, TalkTalk, and Vodafone.
Fibre rollout target for 2022
As part of its 2020 Spending review, the UK Government published a target of at least 85 per cent’ fibre broadband coverage across the UK by 2025.
In response to this, earlier this year, Openreach increased its initial target of reaching 20 million premises by December 2026 by five million.
Openreach is committed to reaching this target, stating that its engineers are connecting 47,000 properties each week, laying an estimated 770 metres worth of cable every single minute. This equates to a new connection being made every 13 seconds.
The increased importance of connectivity following the pandemic is having a positive impact on adoption, with 1.3 million homes taking out a fibre product with Openreach or one of its partners.
Where Bailey Products come in
Last year alone Bailey Products supplied 381,946 meters of duct rods to Openreach, facilitating their continued progress.
Openreach CEO Clive Selley said “We’re building Full Fibre faster, at lower cost and higher quality than anyone else in the UK and that is testimony to our engineers and build partners who are working flat-out to deliver this life-changing technology to rural, urban and suburban communities all over the country and we’re delighted to be fleshing out our plans with more details about where we’ll be building.”
All duct rods supplied are manufactured to BT Specifications for the installation of fibre optic cabling, the duct rods are manufactured from high quality PVC. All telecom duct rods feature solid brass triggerlock joints commonly known as the ferret joints.
Having the ferret joint mechanism ensures the rods can be quickly connected and released and can be fully rotated while remaining secure, even in the most challenging conditions.
At Bailey Products we are proud to partner with Openreach and are excited to see the fibre network rollout gather pace. To learn more about our duct rods or to speak to one of our experts
