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Nearly Half of UK Councils Expect Superfast Broadband Target to Slip

Monday, Mar 23rd, 2015 (9:35 am) - Score 1,038

A new survey of local authorities across the United Kingdom, which was conducted by the County Councils Network, has claimed that 45% of councils are expecting the Government’s target of bringing fixed line superfast broadband (24Mbps+) to 95% by 2017 to be missed.

The Government has repeatedly insisted that it’s Broadband Delivery UK programme is still on schedule, although a number of recent contract signings by local authorities (examples here, here and here) have set completion dates of 2018 and sometimes even 2019. On top of that BT itself has also predicted a slip into 2018 (here).

In the grander scheme of things a delay of a few short months, on such a huge and complex project, would be entirely understandable and far better than most major infrastructure projects achieve, but politically it’s a lot more toxic when you have to start adding years to the completion date. On top of that the councils are also concerned about how rural areas were being left until last.

Furthermore the same survey also revealed that less than a third of county councils thought the underlying delivery process to be competitive enough, with 65% also saying that confidentiality clauses in their contracts with BT had hampered their ability to get the best value for money.

On the other hand BDUK is not 100% state aid based and thus the reliance on some private investment from BT, which has no real competition in the BDUK framework, effectively cements some sort of confidentiality requirement.

However, according to the FT (paywall), it’s not all bad news and the CCN did praise BDUK for at least working positively to improve connectivity; without which the situation would probably be a lot worse for the millions of premises that should ultimately benefit.

Martin Hill, CCN Spokesman for Infrastructure, said:

Counties are pulling out all the stops to get our communities connected. … CCN members contributed on average about £5.5m for the initial round of the process with more funding for subsequent work.

The [BDUK programme] is on the right track, but it needs to be more flexible and transparent to ensure our goals are met and the final 5% of unconnected communities get access to broadband at a reasonable price. BDUK needs to ensure counties can obtain best value for their investments.”

By contrast the National Audit Office said at the start of this year that BT and BDUK’s Phase 1 deployment (target for bringing superfast broadband to 90% by early 2016) is running “ahead of schedule” and BDUK has also predicted total savings of approximately £72m by 2017-18, which could be reinvested (here). But the NAO also raised similar concerns to the CCN over the lack of transparency and competition in the latest phase 2 (95% target) contracts.

Elsewhere the CCN suggested that the Government’s Connection Voucher scheme, which is currently being used in 50 UK cities and offers up to £3,000 in order to help smaller businesses to cover the cost of getting a superfast broadband (30Mbps+) service installed, should be extended to rural areas.

Last week saw the Government publish its annual Budget 2015 speech, which included an aspirational pledge for 100Mbps+ultra-fast” broadband to be made available to “nearly all the homes in the country” (here). Plus it also proposed the possibility of setting a 5Mbps+ Universal Service Obligation (USO).

But so far no firm funding or timescale has been set for their “ultra-fast” ambition and instead it looks as if the Government’s strategy is merely to support the private sectors (e.g. BT and Virgin Media) existing plans to deploy related technologies through largely commercial investment.

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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