Openreach

The UK company that builds and maintains the copper and fibre network connecting homes and businesses to phone and broadband services.

About Openreach

Openreach looks after the physical network that most UK homes and businesses use for landline and broadband: the copper wires and fibre-optic cables running to houses, street cabinets and telephone exchanges. It does not sell broadband to the public. Instead it sells access to its network to other providers, which the company says number about 690, and they sell packages to customers under their own names. Its products include full fibre broadband, fibre to the cabinet, copper lines and Ethernet connections for businesses. When an engineer in an Openreach van fixes or installs your line, this is the company they work for.

Openreach was created in 2006 after BT gave a set of promises to the regulator, Ofcom, in 2005. After a 2017 review by Ofcom, it became a legally separate company with its own staff, management, purpose and strategy, though it remains a wholly owned subsidiary of BT. In 2018 more than 31,000 people moved across from BT in what the company describes as the largest transfer of its kind in UK corporate history. Its stated aim is to build the strongest network it can, at high quality, so that everyone in the UK can get connected. It also names health and safety, sustainability, and diversity and inclusion as priorities.

Openreach works across the whole UK, since it has to reach every part of the country. Its page lists a registered office in London and says the company is organised into four parts: service delivery, fibre and network delivery, strategic infrastructure development and headquarters. It also set up Openreach Northern Ireland in 2018, and it has run city-wide fibre builds, such as the one announced for Salisbury in 2019. It works with councils, highways authorities, energy suppliers and landowners to get cables and ducts where they are needed, so a lot of the job is planning and coordination as well as digging and climbing poles.

The company says it has more than 23,000 employees and describes them as experienced, resourceful and innovative, and willing to go beyond expectations to deliver a better, faster and more affordable network. That is its own description. Much of the workforce is field engineers who install and repair the network outdoors and in homes, but the company also needs planners, project managers, data and software specialists, designers, customer-service staff, finance and legal teams, and people working on safety and sustainability. It publishes annual reviews and reports, including commitments on gender pay.

We have not researched Openreach's careers routes, so we cannot describe specific schemes. What the company's own history page does tell us is that it hired thousands of trainee engineers in 2018 and 2019, which shows that learning on the job is a big part of how it builds its workforce. If you enjoy practical work, problem solving and being outdoors, or prefer the planning and technology side of a national network, the careers section of the Openreach website is the place to see what is open now.

What they do

• {'desc': 'Builds and looks after the lines and cables that carry broadband and phone services.', 'title': 'Fibre and copper network'}
• {'desc': 'Sells network products to hundreds of communications providers.', 'title': 'Network access for providers'}
• {'desc': 'Dedicated high-capacity connections for businesses.', 'title': 'Business Ethernet'}

Key facts

• Created in 2006; legally separate from BT since 2017 but still a BT subsidiary
• More than 23,000 employees (company page)
• Sells to about 690 communications providers
• Large Big Switch Off programme moving customers from older phone lines to digital voice

Website: www.openreach.com