Openreach Industry Consultation -Exchange Footprint – Feedback from CPs

On 6 May 2021 Openreach published a summary of feedback from its December 2020 industry consulation on Exchange Footprint. 

The document highlighted eight key themes:

1. There is broad support for rationalising the exchange footprint to <1,000 exchanges in the long-term, and recognition that a lot of work will be required to realise this vision

2. Industry is seeking as much certainty as possible about our plans as soon as possible

3. CPs are keen to understand how the costs and benefits of closing exchanges will be shared between Openreach and our customers

4. Openreach and CPs need to work together to minimise disruption for end customers, e.g. due to service migrations and changes to CNI (Critical National Infrastructure)

5. There is particular interest in the technical and commercial solutions for providing leased line services (including Ethernet, Optical and Dark Fibre services) from a reduced exchange estate 

6. CPs requested more clarity about how space and power will be managed, especially how these would be allocated between CPs in the event that demand exceeded supply 

7. We need to agree as an industry how to provide and pay for network resilience as the exchange footprint is reduced, both for individual circuits and for high-capacity network nodes

8. Outside the FTTP footprint CPs recognise there are various options for enabling exchange exit, and are keen to work with Openreach, Ofcom and government to deliver the appropriate technical and commercial solutions

The full document can be downloaded from here.