The Welsh Government appears to have posted an official tender for their Superfast Cymru “Infill Project“, which will look to extend the reach of superfast broadband (24Mbps+) services to beyond the current target(s).
At present the existing programme, which among other funding sources is also supported by £56,930,000 from the central Government’s Broadband Delivery UK programme, is working with BT in order to make faster “fibre broadband” (FTTC/P) connectivity available to 96% of premises in Wales by the end of spring 2016.
According to Thinkbroadband, which spotted the new tender, the actual reach of fixed line “superfast” speeds will probably hit around 91% by the completion date for the above phase 1 programme. But since then BDUK has been allocated another pot of £250m under its Phase 2 Superfast Extension Programme (SEP), with the goal being to push superfast speeds out to 95% by 2017, and some £12,110,000 of that will be given to Wales.
Last year the Welsh Government conducted a Superfast Cymru Infill Consultation in order to understand how best to spend the additional investment. The consultation noted how 45,877 premises in 5,345 postcodes, which have no NGA broadband provider, were not in scope of the current (Phase 1 BDUK) Superfast Cymru project.
At this stage we don’t yet know precisely how much additional investment will be allocated to the second phase of the Superfast Cymru project or how much further the coverage might be improved. Crucially today’s tender sets an upper figure of just £3m, but that may be because it will only cover the “infill requirements for business and industrial parks (not residential) only and will be divided into 2 by geography (South Wales and North Wales).”
Welsh Broadband Tender Description
It is expected that the current Superfast Cymru contract with BT will not provide Superfast Broadband services to 100 % of premises in Wales by 30.6.2016 due to combinations of the following BT-reported issues in some locations:
a) Legacy network architecture, such as ‘exchange-only lines’ preventing standard product deployment.
b) Relatively low forecast revenue density for standard product development, such as business parks where investment may be more involved than in residential areas.
c) Relatively high-cost of deploying non-standard products, some of which may exceed cost per premise expectations.The Welsh Government accepts these issues are real and to address the resulting gaps in service provision. To this end, the Welsh Government has decided to establish a project to procure a service/s that:
a) Provides Superfast Broadband services to these areas (as identified by the latest Open Market Review).
b) Meets the necessary and sufficient requirements for compliance with the EC State Aid Decision as interpreted by latest BDUK Guidance.
c) May use additional grant aid funding over and above that secured for Superfast Cymru.
d) Promotes maximum possible competition from across the market and the various technical solutions.This procurement will cover infill requirements for business and industrial parks (not residential) only and will be divided into 2 by geography (South Wales and North Wales).
The contract length is also stated to be a predicted 84 months, which equates to seven years. It should be said that contract length isn’t merely a reflection of deployment timescale, indeed we’d anticipate that the actual deployment will be much shorter. But some aspects of a contract, such as the claw-back mechanism, are often measured over a considerably longer period of time.
Ultimately we’ll have to wait for the Welsh Government to announced their final plan before knowing exactly what they intend to do.
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