BT/Openreach: mining the old telephone network for copper
Disposition: stated. Newspaper reporting of BT's annual report figures; read from long search text on 2026-10-19 (ISPreview returned 403 in the browser).
What: as Openreach replaces the copper access network with fibre, BT strips the old cable and sells it forward to the recycler EMR. Why: it is the largest worked example of a hibernating infrastructure stock becoming an ore body, and the price that makes it pay is partly set by data-centre demand. Bears on macro-view (secondary supply in the cost race), on farmer-mutual-telephones (the same kind of copper plant, now as a mine) and on the steer's open AI-capex hunch.
Key points, as read:
- BT recovered 3,300 t of copper in the year to March 2024, 5,600 t to March 2025, and about 9,147-10,000 t to March 2026; 22,347 t in total since 2023. Openreach expects up to 200,000 t through the 2030s, in step with customer migration to fibre.
- Forward sales to EMR: £105m upfront in 2024 and £99m in 2026, each for about 20,000 t over four years, plus spot sales. The whole stock was valued at ~£1.5bn in 2024 and £2bn-plus in 2026.
- Copper closed at a record ~$14,294/t in late August 2026, "driven partly by data centre construction" (Resultsense summary of the Guardian piece).
- Cable theft persists on buried cable, which cannot be marked with the synthetic-DNA tracer applied to new cable.
- ISPreview's 2023 headline (snippet only): fibre "costs less than the scrap value of the same length of copper".
URLs: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/aug/31/bt-windfall-selling-old-copper-cables-telecoms-broadband-metal ; https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/sep/29/bt-recycling-deal-surplus-copper-cables ; https://resultsense.com/news/2026-09-01-bt-copper-windfall-ai-demand (all search text, read 2026-10-19)
Backlinks: macro-view, wallsten-urban-infrastructure-mines, trail-2026-10-19