BT Community Scheme Helps 25,000 UK Premises Get Fibre Broadband

BTOpenreach has announced that their ‘Community Fibre Partnerships‘, which involve working with residents of isolated communities in order to upgrade their local connectivity, will soon have brought “fibre broadband” (FTTC/P) services to an extra 25,000 UK homes and businesses.

Openreach has been running similar partnerships for a few years and the current approach involves a co-funding model, which requires local residents and businesses to cover any costs that rise above those of BTOR’s own commercial model for the area. Once agreed, 50% of the gap funding must be paid prior to work starting and the final 50% on completion.

Communities that tend to follow this path are those that aren’t expected to benefit from the state aid fuelled Broadband Delivery UK programme. Apparently the 50th community to benefit is Coleorton in Leicestershire (England), although “dozens more“contracts are in progress (once completed they will have helped to cover an extra 25,000 UK premises).

Apparently the latest deployment started after people living on Coleorton Hall estate, a Grade II listed building converted into residential apartments, asked Openreach to help them upgrade the area because slow broadband speeds of 1-2Mbps were far too common. On top of that around 120 premises across the wider village will also benefit from the new network.

David Baston, Coleorton Hall Resident, said:

“We knew that we might have to wait for some time before receiving fibre broadband and so decided to take matters into our own hands. We approached BT directly and are delighted with the end result. Having access to superfast broadband has opened up many opportunities and we can do so much more online now than before.”

Sadly we’re given no information about the funding involved, although similar projects elsewhere have required local communities to contribute anything from around £10,000 to £60,000 (depending upon the area and challenges involved). For example, the 2014 upgrade in Binfield Heath cost local people £56,000 and a similar project in Ashley village gobbled £15,000 (here).

Interestingly the latest partnership in Coleorton appears to have gone live almost one year ago when some 400 homes were connected to “superfast broadband” (24Mbps+) speeds, thus either Openreach’s PR machine is incredibly slow or today’s news references a local extension to that same network.

Kim Mears, Openreach’s MD for Infrastructure Delivery, said:

“We are committed to working with communities like Coleorton to help them achieve their goal of a fast fibre connection. Rural areas often present the most difficult and complex challenges but working together gives us the best chance possible of finding a suitable and affordable way forward. We have a dedicated team focussed on helping people understand what can be achieved in parts of the UK not already covered by existing rollout plans.”

As usual it’s possible to read this story in one of two ways. On the one hand it shows that BT has the capacity to adapt and deliver a useful service by working with a very small community, but on the other it’s arguably a bit disappointing that the community felt it had no other option than to donate money to get better broadband from the national incumbent. At least the end result is still faster broadband and that’s a good thing.

Furthermore it’s unclear whether the community attempted to court the interest of any alternative network providers, such as Gigaclear, which might potentially have been able to roll-out an even faster network and possibly do it for less money.