Openreach adds 79 exchanges to stop sell

Openreach has announced a further 79 new exchange locations across the UK have been added to its stop sell programme. The locations cover more than 900,000 premises across the UK where the business plans to halt the sale of traditional copper based phone and broadband services to encourage people to upgrade to new digital services over a full fibre connection. 

The business is giving communication providers such as BT, Sky, TalkTalk and Vodafone that use its network one year’s notice that it will no longer be selling legacy analogue products and services where full fibre becomes available to a majority (more than 75 per cent) of premises in these new exchange locations.  

Stop sell is triggered when a majority (75 per cent) of premises connected to a particular exchange can get full fibre. Customers who then want to switch, upgrade or re-grade their broadband or phone service will have to take a new digital service over Openreach’s new full fibre network.

Customers in these exchanges not yet able to get full fibre at their premises won't be impacted, and can stay on their existing copper based service until the service becomes available.

To date, stop sell rules have been activated in 748 exchanges, with more than six million premises now under active stop sell. In those areas, full fibre is available to a majority of premises and new copper products cannot be sold. A further 41 exchanges covering another 292,000 premises are due to go live next month.

James Lilley, Openreach’s managed customer migrations manager, said, “We’re moving to a digital world and Openreach is helping with that transformation by rolling out ultrafast, ultra-reliable, and future-proofed digital full fibre across the UK. This game changing technology will become the backbone of our economy for decades to come, supporting every aspect of our public services, businesses, industries and daily lives.

“Already, our full fibre network is available to more than 15 million homes and businesses, with more than five million premises currently taking a service. Taking advantage of the progress of our full fibre build and encouraging people to upgrade where a majority can access our new network is the right thing to do as it makes no sense, both operationally and commercially, to keep the old copper network and our new fibre network running side-by-side. As copper’s ability to support modern communications declines, the immediate focus is getting people onto newer, future proofed technologies.”

The full list of exchanges is below: