BT's Openreach opens its doors

BT's Openreach business, established to offer rival operators equal access to its local exchanges, began operations today.

Openreach is an autonomous division of BT, first announced in September last year. It was set up to comply with a regulatory framework agreed with communications watchdog Ofcom.

The new unit's performance will be checked by a new authority called the Equality of Access Board (EAB), which should ensure BT meets the undertakings it made to Ofcom.

For over 20 years, BT's rivals have lacked equal access to the exchanges BT inherited when it was privatised. "[Now] the big day has arrived," said Openreach's chief executive, Steve Robertson. "The whole 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."

With 25,000 engineers and 22,000 vans, Openreach looks set to become a household name. The organisation has been charged with installing, providing and maintaining "the first mile" of connections, fibre and wiring through local BT exchanges. In addition to its own headquarters, Openreach will have assets of around £8bn and revenues of £4bn, and about 30,000 staff. It makes up the second largest arm part of BT, and sits alongside BT Global Services, BT Retail and BT Wholesale.

Industry observers have said that Openreach will have its work cut out to improve the UK's last-mile infrastructure. Current Analysis analyst Sandra O'Boyle said, "I doubt that BT could afford or could justify the ROI [return on investment] on a nationwide [fibre] rollout, but it has conducted fibre-to-the-home trials and fibre-to-the-premises trials. On a related note, the city of Amsterdam is funding a fibre rollout and we could see that [ public-private partnership] approach in the UK, though the operator would not necessarily be BT."