Broadband Delivery UK Stretches Admin Budget Away from Rural Projects

The governments Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) office, which is responsible for managing the £830m publicly funded roll-out of superfast broadband ISP services to reach 90% of people by spring 2015, will see just 63% of its £3.8m administration budget spent on rural projects in 2012-13 (down from 100% in 2010-11 and 94% in 2011-12).

According to Computerworld UK, the change is because BDUK has taken on additional admin responsibilities, such as the £164m Urban Broadband Fund (UBF) for expanding the coverage of “ultra-fast” broadband (80-100Mbps+) and “high speed” public wifi services into neglected areas of 22 large and smaller cities.

BDUK is also now responsible for the £150m Mobile Infrastructure Project (MIP), which aims to help “at least” 98% of UK people gain access to a Mobile Broadband service by the end of 2017.

History – BDUK Administration Budgets
2010-11 – £1 million (100% for rural projects)
2011-12 – £5.85 million (94% for rural projects)
2012-13 – £3.8 million (63% for rural projects)

Last year it was revealed that a whopping £9.8m of the office’s budget had already been spent on 70 external consultants (between May 2010 and September 2012) and the department suffered a staff turnover rate of 110% for three quarters (the rate at which an employer gains and loses employees). ISPreview.co.uk published a related list of BDUK staff roles in November last year.

In fairness most of the necessary leg work for the relevant Local Broadband Plans (LBP), which apply to each of the 50 or so related / county projects around the United Kingdom, has already been done and so it makes sense that the offices administrative resource would now start to be diverted towards its other schemes.

1. wirelesspacman

   January 10, 2013 at 9:36 am

   presumably the first priority of these BDUK contractors is to keep sourcing additional, future funds to keep their wonderful gravy train running.

   Reply
2. nicknick

   January 10, 2013 at 10:45 am

   how much work does it take to send an email “just give the money to BT”? I suppose most of the work is to try and make it look like a valid procurement exercise

   Reply
   • wirelesspacman

     January 10, 2013 at 2:44 pm

     could not agree more
   • Anon

     January 10, 2013 at 4:43 pm

     Down here in Cornwall that approach seems to have worked – BT is well underway in FTTCing and FTTPing (yes, it really does exist) as appropriate while most of the rest of the country is still umming and aahing over it.

     Given how the likes of Digital Region are doing I’m glad BT are doing it instead, even though it’s BT – at least I can have any ISP I want…

     (it helps that BT are putting a very substantial amount of their own money in too, rather than it being totally publicly funded)
   • nicknick

     January 10, 2013 at 6:33 pm

     Unfortunately the problems in Digital Region demonstrate the point that giving too much power to BT DOES distort the market. Numerous challenges were raised against BTs unfair pricing policy for Sub Loop Unbundling (don’t forget the similar issue with the duct pricing), but because Ofcom is from the same incompetence stable that BDUK is from that was another f up.
   • New_Londoner

     January 12, 2013 at 7:22 am

     If I had to choose between Cornwall and Digital Region, Cornwall would get my vote every time. Conspiracy theorists will always look for someone to blame, when the reality is £100m+ of our tax money has been squandered on what appears to be a massive vanity project. It would have been cheaper to provide each of the (<2000?) customers with a dedicated fibre connection than to do this, especially when the private sector would almost certainly have covered the urban areas anyway.

     Why this got state aid approval is a mystery, it makes BDUK look like a model of efficiency in comparison.
   • nicknick

     January 14, 2013 at 10:21 am

     As you ably demonstrate by the fact you BT Marketing guys keep coming on here trying to justify why BT should get all the money, BT is aggressively dominant in this space and is allowed to stifle real competition as completely demonstrated by Digital Region. How come BT spends more on ‘lobbying’ Ofcom than those ‘small’ companies total revenues?

     The fact BT funds you to come on here and distribute your propaganda is demonstration enough. Are you happy with your pound of flesh?
3. dragoneast

   January 10, 2013 at 11:36 am

   Well I suppose as none of the innumerable wingers has yet put their money where their mouth is, and launched a legal challenge – surely bound to succeed if it’s such an obvious sham as some people constantly assert; the consultants must be doing their job well, hey?

   Reply
   • wirelesspacman

     January 10, 2013 at 2:46 pm

     It might have escaped your notice that launching a legal challenge is beyond the financial scope of a small company.

     Big companies, such as BT and Virgin, can afford to do it all the time if they wish – as evidenced over their challenge to the Birmingham area ultrafast support fund.
   • dragoneast

     January 10, 2013 at 10:37 pm

     exactly: it’s not the fees, it’s that the issues are no-where near as simple or clear as (even experienced) posters often pretend that makes litigation so expensive and risky, i.e. poor or a lack of evidence. There are contingency fee arrangements for good cases, not for weak or hopeless ones; and unfortunately no-one owes good local companies a living.
   • New_Londoner

     January 12, 2013 at 7:37 am

     @wirelesspacman
     So are you seriously suggesting that companies that don’t have the capital to fund a legal challenge nevertheless have sufficient funding to invest alongside the BDUK money to provide fibre broadband to all or most of the final third? Or do you think these “small companies” should be given all the capital required by BDUK? If so, how much of the final third will actually get coverage as the consensus seems to be that you need rather more than £500m or so to deploy, and then a fair bit of additional capital to run the service until it is cash-flow positive, starts delivering an operating profit.

     Let’s get beyond the “small company is best” hype and deal with the harsh reality that you need pretty substantial capital, resources and expertise to deliver at the scale required. The last thing we want is to see BDUK spend our money and end up with a whole series of new Digital Region debacles.
4. Jon Roberts

   January 10, 2013 at 5:41 pm

   is this article just spin by bduk? as a lot of staff have left so administration costs would obviously be lower

   Reply
   • Mark Jackson

     January 15, 2013 at 12:35 pm

     Hehe it’s a unique perspective indeed if you can read the article as “spin” .

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