More West Midlands homes and businesses to benefit from broadband upgrade

A further 36 towns and villages will benefit from the ongoing huge broadband upgrade by Openreach.

Towns that will get the improved technology include Blackheath, Cradley Heath, Halesowen, Lye, Smethwick and Stourbridge in the Black Country.

In Shropshire Albrighton, Cuckoo Oak, Donnington, Harlescott, Quatt, Shawbury and Shifnal will benefit.

Whittington and Fazeley in Staffordshire and Hagley, Hartlebury and Rock in Worcestershire are also on the list for improvements to their service.

They join more than 1.25 million homes and businesses across the region who already have access to the 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 million homes and businesses.

Kasam Hussain, regional director for the Midlands, said: “This is a huge infrastructure success story across the Midlands. 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, of which more than 3,500 live in the region, 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 and make 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.