BT Moot Free FTTP Broadband Trials for New UK Housing Developments

BTOpenreach are currently reviewing their approach to the provision of Superfast Broadband (24Mbps+) at major housing developments and, as part of this strategy, the operator is evaluating a series of “free trials” for their 330Mbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) technology across the United Kingdom.

Apparently Openreach will make these trials available to developers who register sites with 100+ new homes, although it’s understood that unspecified “pressures” on BT’s resources will limit the number and scale of their available trial slots (note: further slots are expected to become available later this year).

ISPreview.co.uk spotted mention of the trials while examining several recent documents from Hampshire County Council, which in related news has also announced a new extension of its own Hampshire Superfast Broadband project called Getting Connected. The aim of this is to help support new housing developments that will not be superfast-enabled through commercial investment.

Similarly ISPreview.co.uk has recently reported on a number of situations where major housing developments have been built without consideration of the need for modern superfast broadband to be installed at the same time, which has often left new home owners stuck on slower copper line based ADSL connections (examples here, here and here).

It’s important to note that BTOpenreach’s Universal Service Obligation (USO) only extends to the installation of a basic phone line that can deliver dialup (narrowband) levels of Internet access, thus there is no legal onus upon Openreach to deploy anything better. Meanwhile some housing developers simply ignore the issue and home buyers can easily overlook it or be misled.

Openreach often points to a lack of commercial viability for upgrading such developments, although many have questioned how they arrive at such decisions. Indeed we’ve seen a number of areas that were originally deemed unviable and yet returned huge uptake upon deployment, so it’s clearly not an exact science.

Hampshire County Council Report Extract

“The failure of developers and broadband providers to make superfast provision for new homes has produced an additional group of premises (outside existing contracts) for which new arrangements will need to be made. A drive to encourage the private sector to ensure that future developments are enabled for superfast services is required, but a response is also required for those sites where residents already living in new homes are encountering the same problems as those in rural and hard-to-reach areas. It seems that unless the County Council enables or uses its leverage on both Broadband providers and housing developers these premises will be left behind.

While seeking to ensure that public intervention is properly targeted, the County Council will wish to consider the possibility of extending the number of premises for which intervention is being considered to include those Hampshire residents living in new housing developments where the private sector has not and is unlikely to make commercially-funded provision for them.

It is clear that unless the County Council plans, influences and (sometimes) directs BT in many instances the programmes will underachieve for some residents. It could be expected that the County Council’s involvement will therefore stretch out for several years to come.”

At this stage the Getting Connected programme isn’t especially well fleshed out and the council admits that there is no statutory responsibility for them to engage with the developers or broadband providers, although happily this appears to be precisely what they’re going to do. Quite how all this will be tackled remains the subject of on-going discussions.

In the meantime the council notes that there are around 4,800 new homes on existing phases of housing developments, which are outside of the councils “Intervention Area” for their broadband scheme and where the developers and broadband ISPs have so far not arranged the provision of superfast services through commercial investment. A schedule of the largest 30 developments, which accounts for more than 80% of the total, is included below.

Sites Requiring HCC Intervention
Cabinet ID – Site Address – No. Properties
ROMSEY 20 – LAND AT, ABBOTSWOOD, SANDY LANE, ABBOTSWOOD, ROMSEY – 436
TITCHFIELD 18 – LAND AT, HUNTS POND ROAD, TITCHFIELD COMMON, FAREHAM – 327
FLEET 28 – LAND WEST OF, HITCHES LANE, FLEET – 263
EASTLEIGH 44 – LAND SOUTH OF SOUTH STREET, WIDE LANE, EASTLEIGH – 254
TURGIS GREEN 16 – LAND AT, TAYLOR’S FARM, SHERFIELD PL GAIGER AVENUE, CHINEHAM – 227
FARNBOROUGH 119 – QUEENSGATE SITE, GOVERNMENT HOUSE ROAD, FARNBOROUGH – 220
WATERLOOVILLE 60 – OLD PARK FARM, LONDON ROAD, WATERLOOVILLE – 203
FARNBOROUGH 112 – FARNBOROUGH BUSINESS PARK, O’GORMAN ROAD, FARNBOROUGH – 200
ALTON 33 – LAND AT, CHANDOS LODGE AND GRANGE HOTEL ANSTEY ROAD, ANTSEY, ALTON – 188
ANDOVER 48 – LAND AT, PICKET TWENTY, ANDOVER – 188
BASINGSTOKE 34 – REGENERATION SCHEME, FAROE_MALDIVE CLOSE, BASINGSTOKE – 185
HARTLEY WINTNEY 1 – LAND SOUTH OF, DILLY LANE, HARTLEY WINTNEY, HOOK – 172
BASINGSTOKE 102 – LAND AT, JOHN HUNT SCHOOL, SHAKESPEARE ROAD, POPLEY – 124
LIPHOOK 10 – KING GEORGES HOSPITAL, HEWSHOTT LANE, LIPHOOK – 90
ANDOVER 81 – LAND AT, PICKET TWENTY, ANDOVER – 74
LOCKS HEATH 64 – COLDEAST HOSPITAL, COLDEAST WAY, SARISBURY, SOUTHAMPTON – 68
BASINGSTOKE 116 – SKIPPETTS HOUSE SKIPPETTS LANE WEST BASINGSTOKE – 67
BASINGSTOKE 130 – BEECH DOWN PRE SCHOOL, GERSHWIN ROAD, BASINGSTOKE – 67
FAREHAM 62 – BROADLAW WALK, BROADLAW WALK, FAREHAM – 67
HAMBLE 5 – ROTARY COURT, ROTARY COURT, NETLEY ABBEY, SOUTHAMPTON – 66
WATERLOOVILLE 61 – GRAINGER DEVELOPMENT SITE, NEWLANDS LANE, WATERLOOVILLE – 64
WINCHESTER 34 – LAND AT, WORTHY ROAD_FRANCIS GARDENS, WINCHESTER – 63
HAVANT 54 – RAMSDALE PLAYING FIELDS, WOOLSTON ROAD, HAVANT – 60
WHITELEY 108 – WHITELEY FARM, WHITELEY, FAREHAM – 60
BASINGSTOKE 90 – LAND NORTH OF, POPLEY, SHERBORNE ROAD, POPLEY, BASINGSTOKE – 54
FAREHAM 50 – 1-25 THE LEISURE CUNNINGHAM DRIVE GOSPORT – 54
HEADLEY 1 – LAND AT, ASH ROAD, BEECH ROAD, LINDEN R BISHOPS GREEN, NEWBURY – 46
LEE-ON-THE-SOLENT 9 – ROGERS HOUSE, ELMORE ROAD, LEE-ON-THE-SOLENT – 44
WATERLOOVILLE 60 – OLD PARK FARM, WATERLOOVILLE – 40
TADLEY 19 – BOUNDARY HALL, MULFORDS HILL, TADLEY – 38

Furthermore Hampshire’s preliminary research has identified planning (forecast) data for new housing developments for the period 2014 to 2020. Overall, the list includes more than 250 sites and over 37,000 new homes. Some of these already have agreements with BT and or other operators for superfast broadband, but the council states that a “substantial proportion” do not presently have any such commitments in place.

It’s likely that several of Openreach’s “free” FTTP trials will thus take place in some of the above developments, although no specifics are currently known and the matter is still the subject of on-going discussions between the council, developers and BT. However the council has said it does have a “strong interest” in such a trial taking place with at least “some parts” of the proposed development at Bordon-Whitehill (this is one of the future 2014-2020 builds with about 4,000 homes planned and some 377 of those are due to get slower FTTC).

Several other councils are known to be looking at this issue, alongside the Government, and no doubt Openreach has a few developments already in mind for their trials, although we’re not entirely sure what they’ll learn that hasn’t already been learnt from past experiences with such developments. Perhaps some new deployment approaches will be tried.

Meanwhile Hampshire is continuing to press on with its Broadband Delivery UK based project to make superfast broadband (24Mbps+) connectivity available to “at least” 95% of the local population by “mid 2019 or earlier” (details). At least now we know that new homes in Hampshire are less likely to be left behind, but consumers should always ask plenty of questions about broadband provision before parting with their cash. Never assume it will be good enough.