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UPDATE Cumbria’s Fibre GarDen FTTP Broadband Rollout on Knife Edge

Wednesday, Feb 4th, 2015 (11:13 am) - Score 1,574

The community owned Digital Dales (Fibre GarDen) project, which is supposed to be building a 100Mbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network across the rural villages of Garsdale and Dentdale in Cumbria (England), is in doubt again after councillors put the plan to a vote.

The project, which is costing around £650,000 to deploy, successfully secured the necessary funding last summer (here) and since then work has already started on the engineering survey in order to map a roll-out plan for some 64km of fibre optic cable, which is to be built by the ITS Technology Group. If all goes well then the deployment would complete by the end of 2015.

But at the end of last year there were signs of trouble again (here), with at least one Conservative councillor being concerned about the projects deliverability. At the same time Fibre GarDen has hit delays with securing capacity from its backhaul supplier (i.e. Network Rail denied them access) and then over the past couple of weeks we’ve noted how the schemes website has vanished, with no new updates being posted.

On top of all that the Westmorland Gazette now reports that Cumbria Council will tomorrow review the decision to exclude (descope) part of Dent from the rival BT dominated Broadband Delivery UK contract. If the decision is reversed then Fibre GarDen would be in serious trouble (many homes will miss out on the new service) and BT could table a £70,000 compensation bill.

Libby Bateman, Councillor for Kirkby Stephen, said:

Connecting Cumbria has already spent public money installing a cabinet in the middle of Dent that is ready to connect 193 properties in the village to Superfast Broadband; that money will have been wasted if the de-scoping goes ahead.

There is also a risk that the Council’s supplier will pursue the Council for loss of income on the investment. This is a risk that the ruling cabinet must weigh up against the potential to bring in additional investment and connect more properties, but they must consider that risk with the correct information.

If the county council descope and Fibre GarDen are not able to deliver then the community of Dent will be left with nothing and the county council will be left with a substantial bill to have delivered nothing.”

It’s worth pointing out that Bateman said last December that she had “been a supporter of the Fibre GarDen project from its inception as it is the ultimate ‘build and benefit’ community broadband project.” Bateman is also a big supporter and beneficiary of BT’s part-community supported deployment of fibre broadband services in the rural Fell End project (here). It seems that only in politics can you proclaim to support something and at the same time seek to destroy it.

The good news is that Fibre GarDen has told the newspaper that their “backhaul is secure” thanks to a new contract provider, which will hopefully be considered during tomorrow’s meeting. ISPreview.co.uk also spoke to the ITS Technology Group last week, which confirmed the alternative backhaul plan and added that they’d completed all pre construction design, have suppliers lined up, but need to await the final descope vote.

We’ll update the article once tomorrow’s decision is known. Credits to Thinkbroadband for spotting the newspaper article.

UPDATE 6th Feb 2015

Good news for the Fibre GarDen project today, Cumbria Council has reaffirmed the de-scope decision in their favour. “Many thanks for their confidence. All systems go now,” said the community project via Twitter last night.

David Southward, Cumbria Council Member for Economic Development, said:

Fibre Garden has been working on their plan for some years now – it was in the making before Connecting Cumbria started. These are local people, with local knowledge and local support. It makes sense for them to use the DEFRA funding to underpin their own scheme, but in order to make that happen we have to agree to step aside and remove the area from the Connecting Cumbria programme.

We are happy to do that in the knowledge that Fibre Garden has the full support from BDUK. Ultimately our priority is getting better broadband into homes and businesses across the county, so we wish them all the best in their endeavours.”

Mark-Jackson
By Mark Jackson
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and .
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