The state aid supported Broadband Delivery UK project, which is primarily working with BT to deploy superfast “fibre broadband” (FTTC/P) services across the United Kingdom, has now published its latest take-up figures to the end of June 2015 and more councils have now passed the crucial 20% threshold.
Understanding take-up is important because it links into a key clawback (gain share) clause in the BDUK contracts, which requires BT to return part of the investment when adoption of the new service passes beyond the 20% mark in related areas.
BT recently revised their related take-up target upwards to 30% (here) and as a result BDUK has now confirmed that clawback could be worth as much as £129 million across the United Kingdom, which can be reinvested to improve coverage.
The latest figures below only reflect uptake in areas that have been upgraded through the state aid fuelled BDUK schemes (i.e. % connected of premises passed so far), which excludes any uptake achieved through purely commercial deployments. Naturally for proper context the percentages below need to be considered alongside the premises passed data for each local authority (here)
Otherwise it’s good to see that a growing number of Local Authorities are now passing the 20% threshold and in order to show how this has changed we’ve also added the previous March 2015 data alongside.
Project Area | Uptake % (March 2015) | Uptake % (June 2015) |
Berkshire Councils | 11.2 | 18.5 |
Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire | 15 | 18.7 |
Cambridgeshire, Peterborough | 19.5 | 23.1 |
Central Beds, Bedford Borough, Milton Keynes | 13.4 | 17.2 |
Cheshire East, Cheshire West & Chester, Warrington, Halton | 16.1 | 18.4 |
Devon & Somerset (including, Plymouth, Torbay, North Somerset, Bath & NE Somerset) | 13.3 | 14.8 |
Coventry, Solihull, Warwickshire | 15.9 | 17.2 |
Cumbria | 17.3 | 19.2 |
Derbyshire | 9.1 | 11 |
Dorset, Bournemouth and Poole | 12.9 | 14.3 |
Durham, Gateshead, Tees Valley and Sunderland | 11.3 | 13.4 |
East Riding of Yorkshire | 8 | 12.1 |
East Sussex, Brighton and Hove | 13.9 | 16.4 |
Essex, Southend-On-Sea, Thurrock | 11.2 | 14.3 |
Greater Manchester | 8.5 | 11.4 |
Hampshire | 17.6 | 19.3 |
Herefordshire and Gloucestershire | 20.3 | 20.9 |
Isle of Wight | 6.5 | 8.2 |
Kent and Medway | 13.7 | 16.2 |
Lancashire, Blackpool, Blackburn with Darwen | 14.3 | 15.4 |
Leicestershire | 10.4 | 16.3 |
Lincolnshire | 12.9 | 15.7 |
Merseyside | 6.7 | 8.9 |
Newcastle upon Tyne | 5.8 | 8.1 |
Norfolk | 14.9 | 18.2 |
North Lincolnshire, North East Lincolnshire | 15.3 | 19.2 |
North Yorkshire | 23.5 | 25.6 |
Northamptonshire | 21.3 | 23.3 |
Northumberland | 16.1 | 18.4 |
Nottinghamshire | 9.7 | 14.2 |
Oxfordshire | 16.2 | 18.2 |
Rutland | 39.8 | 42.3 |
Shropshire | 16.9 | 19 |
Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent | 10.7 | 13.3 |
Suffolk | 17.1 | 17.9 |
Surrey | 27.1 | 29.8 |
West Sussex | 14.9 | 18 |
West Yorkshire | 10.7 | 12.1 |
Wiltshire, South Gloucestershire | 18.7 | 16.1 |
Worcestershire | 12.5 | 15.6 |
Devolved Administrations | ||
Highlands and Islands | 11.6 | 13.1 |
Northern Ireland | 8.5 | 9.6 |
Rest of Scotland | 10.8 | 12.3 |
Wales | 13.7 | 15.6 |
Take note that take-up is a dynamically scaled measurement, which means that at certain stages of the scheme it may go up or possibly even down depending upon the pace of deployment and other factors (e.g. Wiltshire, South Gloucestershire had 18.7% in Q1 and this is now 16.1%, but over time the take-up should only rise). In keeping with this some of the projects may report far lower take-up than others, although these are usually younger deployments.
Some of the other factors that can impact take-up include higher prices for FTTC/P services (less attractive), consumers being locked into long contracts with their existing ISP (can’t upgrade yet) and a lack of general availability awareness (locals don’t know it exists) or interest in the new connectivity (if you have a decent ADSL2+ speed then you might be less inclined to upgrade).
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