The Government’s (DCMS) Building Digital UK team has published a new batch of Public Reviews (PR) for their £5bn Project Gigabit broadband rollout, which covers a total of nine contractable regions in England, such as Dorset, Greater London, Merseyside and Greater Manchester, Newcastle, Birmingham and more.
Just to recap. The project aims to ensure that 85% of UK premises can access a gigabit-capable (1Gbps+) broadband ISP connection by the end of 2025, before reaching “at least” 99% by the end of 2030 (here and here). The public investment released for this is focused on serving the final 20% of the UK (5-6 million premises), where the private sector has failed to deliver (i.e. the hardest to reach rural and some sub-urban areas).
NOTE: Commercial builds alone – mostly in urban areas – have already pushed gigabit coverage to around 70% of UK premises and it should reach 80%+ by the end of 2025 without public investment.
In England, this programme is centrally managed by BDUK, rather than local authorities. But the first step – before procurements can begin and contracts be awarded – is to identify precisely which areas are not expected to benefit from gigabit speeds under ongoing commercial builds, which covers related plans for the next 3 years. Only once you have the answer to that can you identify where public funding will be needed to tackle market failure.
The latest batch of reviews covers nine different regions across England under the Project Gigabit programme. Most of the details for these areas, including those from earlier phases, have already been revealed, but the final Public Reviews should confirm the exact intervention areas under the related Gigabit Infrastructure Subsidy (GIS) programme.
We’ve summarised all the additions below, but it’s notable that big urban regions like London, Birmingham, Newcastle and Greater Manchester have now been added to the programme (the procurement details for these are still to be decided). Despite being urban regions, there will be some locations within each area that could be considered to fall within the final 20% of premises due to market failure, although this may run into some conflict with how Ofcom defines “rural” areas. We’ll need to see more details of each procurement before judging this.
NOTE: The Public Review process aims to validate the outcome of earlier Open Market Reviews (OMR) and BDUK’s mapping, hence PRs are the final review stage before procurement. In addition, the PRs below enable us to see the outcome of earlier OMRs (i.e. how many premises will need support).
September 2022 Batch of Public Reviews for England
The OMR indicated that planned commercial coverage for gigabit-capable broadband would reach approximately 262,517 premises, and would therefore leave the remaining 147,991 premises without access to gigabit-capable broadband.
Estimated contract commencement date: April to June 2024
Indicative contract value: £62 to 105 million
Estimated number of uncommercial premises: 56,500The OMR indicated that planned commercial coverage for gigabit-capable broadband would reach approximately 756,564 premises, and would therefore leave the remaining 481,393 premises without access to gigabit-capable broadband.
Estimated contract commencement date: January to March 2024
Indicative contract value: £198 to 337 million
Estimated number of uncommercial premises: 159,600Cornwall and Isles of Scilly (Lot 32)
The OMR indicated that planned commercial coverage for gigabit-capable broadband would reach approximately 117,103 premises, and would therefore leave the remaining 221,915 premises without access to gigabit-capable broadband.
Cornwall currently has several smaller local contracts in live procurement:
LOT 32.02 – Approximately 9,500 remote premises in central Cornwall, from the north coast (between Newquay and Otterham) to the south coast (between Portloe and Fowey) – £18.02m
LOT 32.03 – Approximately 9,750 remote premises across Penwith and The Lizard, as far as Hayle, Praze-an-Beeble and Constantine – £18.08m
The OMR indicated that planned commercial coverage for gigabit-capable broadband would reach approximately 492,486 premises, and would therefore leave the remaining 367,850 premises without access to gigabit-capable broadband.
Estimated contract commencement date: April to June 2024
Indicative contract value: £79 to 135 million
Estimated number of uncommercial premises: 78,400Birmingham and the Black Country (Lot 35)
The OMR indicated that planned commercial coverage for gigabit-capable broadband would reach approximately 888,945 premises, and would therefore leave the remaining 208,438 premises without access to gigabit-capable broadband.
Details TBA.
Northern North Yorkshire (Lot 31)
The OMR indicated that planned commercial coverage for gigabit-capable broadband would reach approximately 79,389 premises, and would therefore leave the remaining 193,666 premises without access to gigabit-capable broadband.
Estimated contract commencement date: April to June 2024
Indicative contract value: £25 to 42 million
Estimated number of uncommercial premises: 28,200The OMR indicated that planned commercial coverage for gigabit-capable broadband would reach approximately 2,632,316 premises, and would therefore leave the remaining 1,704,232 premises without access to gigabit-capable broadband.
Details TBA.
Merseyside and Greater Manchester (Lot 36)
The OMR indicated that planned commercial coverage for gigabit-capable broadband would reach approximately 1,549,670 premises, and would therefore leave the remaining 569,694 premises without access to gigabit-capable broadband.
Details TBA.
Newcastle and North Tyneside (Lot 38)
The OMR indicated that planned commercial coverage for gigabit-capable broadband would reach approximately 184,945 premises, and would therefore leave the remaining 71,441 premises without access to gigabit-capable broadband.
Details TBA.
The above reviews are due to run from now until 5pm on 4th November 2022. Some of you will also notice that the “estimated number of uncommercial premises” differs significantly from the OMR figure for “remaining premises without access to gigabit-capable broadband,” which is because the prior OMR figure also includes “Under Review” premises into the total (i.e. premises where suppliers have reported planned commercial broadband coverage, but where those plans have been judged through the OMR as potentially being at risk of not being completed).
In addition, any suppliers (network builders) that failed or were not yet ready with their plans to respond to the earlier OMR phase can still respond via the final PR phase in order to be included. This is important because the current market is rapidly evolving, with new networks and deployment plans seeming to crop up quite frequently.
BDUK has previously also launched a new Rolling National Open Market Review process (these will be run three times a year – i.e. January, May and September), which should in the future make it easier for them to keep track of new developments in commercial builds of gigabit broadband networks. The September review has already begun (here).
