Openreach expands Google Cloud AI partnership to accelerate fibre rollout and cut fleet emissions

Openreach taps Google AI to speed fibre rollout, cut emissions

LONDON, March 25 (Reuters) - Openreach has expanded its partnership with Google Cloud to use artificial intelligence to speed up fibre broadband construction and cut emissions from one of Britain's largest commercial vehicle fleets, the BT-owned network operator said on Wednesday. Openreach, which runs the country's biggest broadband network, said the partnership, first reported by Reuters, ⁠uses Alphabet-owned (GOOGL.O), opens new tab Google's data tools to analyse routes, idling and fault patterns across its 24,000-van fleet, which covers almost 200 million miles (322 million km) a year. "By applying Google Cloud's technologies to real operational challenges, we're seeing practical, measurable benefits," James Tappenden, a managing director at Openreach, said. The company said the system was already ⁠reducing unnecessary travel, cutting fuel use and supporting a faster shift to electric vehicles - a move it said that had removed around 10,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent annually. The ⁠network builder said it was also using Google's AI models to map 35 million homes and national transport corridors, allowing ⁠planners to identify where full-fibre lines can be installed more quickly. Openreach is investing 15 billion pounds ($20.1 ⁠billion) to roll out its fibre network to 25 million premises by the end of 2026. ($1 = 0.7459 pounds) Reporting by Sam Tabahriti; Editing by Alex Richardson Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab * Suggested Topics: * Media & Telecom * EV Battery Sam Tabahriti Thomson Reuters Sam Tabahriti is a UK breaking news correspondent covering general and political news for Reuters. He has over five years of experience covering general news and three years covering business and legal news. He is also a keen cyclist and photography enthusiast.

Openreach expands collaboration with Google Cloud AI

The BT subsidiary, operator of the UK's largest broadband network and the country's second-largest commercial fleet, has built a digital twin of the UK's transport and broadband infrastructure on Vertex AI, and is using Gemini Enterprise to cut engineering overhead by more than half. Openreach, the BT subsidiary that operates the UK's largest broadband network, has expanded its collaboration with Google Cloud to bring AI into two of its most operationally intensive challenges: rolling out full-fibre broadband to 25 million premises by the end of 2026, and decarbonising a fleet of 24,000 commercial vans that collectively cover almost 200 million miles a year. The company announced the expanded partnership on Wednesday. The fleet work is running on BigQuery. Openreach has migrated its fleet telematics data to Google Cloud and is using the platform's geoanalytics capabilities to identify where electric vehicles can most effectively replace diesel vans based on real-world routes, usage patterns, and charging infrastructure. The analysis has helped Openreach accelerate its EV transition, with the company stating that the additional electric vehicles now deployed are removing approximately 10,000 tonnes of CO2e from the road each year. The same analytics are being applied to reduce idling and unnecessary mileage, particularly in clean air zones, and to minimise vehicle downtime by predicting maintenance needs before faults develop. The broadband network work is built on Vertex AI. Openreach has constructed what it describes as a digital twin of the UK's transportation corridors, integrating data for 35 million homes and businesses with national road, rail and waterway networks and its existing fibre infrastructure. The purpose is practical: planners can use the model to identify precisely where full-fibre can be extended most efficiently, routing decisions that would otherwise require manual analysis of multiple disconnected datasets. Openreach has already reached 22 million premises with its full-fibre network and is targeting 25 million by December 2026, with a longer-term ambition of 30 million by the end of the decade. The third component is internal engineering efficiency. Openreach is using Gemini Enterprise, Google Cloud's agent orchestration platform, to automatically convert complex legacy SQL queries into clean, production-ready BigQuery code. The company says this has reduced time-to-insight by more than 50%, freeing its data engineers from manual code maintenance to focus on building new solutions. This is a relatively narrow but measurable use case: legacy query migration is one of the more predictable places to demonstrate AI-driven productivity gains in a large infrastructure organisation with substantial technical debt. Openreach is a wholly owned, independently governed subsidiary of BT Group, and operates at considerable scale: it supports more than 680 service providers, including BT, Sky, TalkTalk, Vodafone, and Zen, through equal-access wholesale pricing, employs around 28,000 people, and reported revenues of £6.157 billion for the year to March 2025. The £15 billion it is investing in full-fibre infrastructure represents one of the largest single capital programmes in UK telecoms history. The Google Cloud partnership sits within the operational layer of that build: neither company disclosed the financial terms of the expanded collaboration.