North East to benefit from Openreach’s huge broadband upgrade

Full fibre broadband is heading to a further 24 towns and villages in the North East, as part of a huge broadband upgrade by Openreach.

More than 180,000 people living and working in Bedlington, Belford, Cockfield, Dudley, Felling, Guisborough, Stanley, Wipeopen and 16 other towns and villages, are next in line for full fibre.

They join more than 470,000 homes and businesses across the region who already have access to the UK’s most reliable broadband technology, thanks to Openreach’s work.

Across the UK, the company has published updated plans to build full fibre broadband to a record 517 more locations – covering a further 2.7[1] million homes and businesses.

Robert Thorburn, Openreach regional director for the North, said: “This is a huge infrastructure success story across the North East. No company is building faster or further in Europe, that we’re aware of.

“We won’t be stopping either. We plan to build even further across the region, to more cities and towns, and our most rural communities.

“And our engineers are doing this at a rapid pace - despite this being a hugely complex engineering project.

“Our fibre checker has the latest information about our work in your area. It’s also worth noting that upgrades aren’t automatic. Once full fibre is available where you live, you’ll need to place an order to get connected and we’ll do the rest!

“Openreach’s network offers the widest choice of providers such as BT, Sky, TalkTalk, Vodafone and Zen – which means people have lots of choice and can get a great deal.”

The work is all part of Openreach’s £15 billion project to upgrade the UK’s broadband infrastructure - making gigabit-capable technology available to 25 million homes and businesses by the end of 2026, including 6.2 million in harder to reach more remote and rural areas.

More than 4.7 million homes and businesses across the UK have already upgraded to Full Fibre and demand continues to flow, with more than 50,000 orders being placed each week.

Openreach has also refreshed its online map and postcode checker to give a clearer, regularly updated view of its plans and progress between now and 2026.

The map now shows the levels of current and future expected full fibre coverage as of today, taking data from all of its build programmes, whilst the postcode checker continues to offer the most personalised view of the connectivity available to an individual home or business.

Further updates will be provided as any additional locations are added in future.

[1] Fig refers to expected build in these exchange areas