1Gbps FTTP Broadband for More of Gloucestershire and Herefordshire

The joint State Aid fuelled Fastershire project for Gloucestershire and Herefordshire in England has announced that rural ISP Gigaclear is now the preferred bidder for the next £4.54m phase of their local broadband roll-out, which will benefit over 2,600 remote premises.

The Fastershire scheme, which is also being supported by Openreach (BT), aims to deliver around 90% “fibre broadband” coverage (includes slower FTTC lines) across both Gloucestershire and Herefordshire by the end of 2016. After that they hope that everyone “will be able to access the broadband services they need” by the end of 2018 and this is where the new contract will help. We should point out that South Gloucestershire also has its own separate scheme (here), which is working towards 95-97% coverage by Dec 2017.

Gigaclear, which specialises in rolling-out ultrafast 1Gbps+ capable Fibre-to-the-Premise (FTTP) broadband networks to rural areas, has already won one £10m contract (£7m of which came from the ISP itself) in the region to cover 6,495 homes and businesses in the Cotswolds area of Gloucestershire by the end of 2017 (so far they’ve completed over 3,900 premises).

However today’s announcement would appear to all but confirm that the provider will also grab a second contract, which aims to reach “over 2,600 of the hardest to reach homes and businesses” in the Forest of Dean (Gloucestershire) and the Golden Valley (Herefordshire).

Mark Hawthorne, Leader of Gloucestershire County Council, said:

“Access to a fast and reliable digital connection is becoming more and more important for families and businesses here in Gloucestershire and right across the UK.

We’re making a real difference to peoples’ lives, enabling the fibre network to reach some of the most rural areas where larger suppliers were not prepared to go. Faster broadband connection remain a priority to our economy, education and supporting our communities. The Fastershire project is pushing the boundaries of the technologies available with this next stage a key step in meeting the ambitions of the two counties.

That’s why phase two of our Fastershire project focuses on using new and emerging technology to deliver full fibre solutions to some of the hardest to reach premises across the county.”

David Harlow, Cabinet Member for Herefordshire Council, added:

“It’s positive that the Government has recognised the importance of “full-fibre” or fibre to the premise (FTTP) access and Fastershire has already made a significant investment in this technology.

It’s a measure of the project’s success that currently 15% of the properties in Herefordshire have access to full-fibre and is in stark contrast to the recent news that only 2% of properties across the UK can access the more future proof technology.

By making the recommendation to award the contract to Gigaclear to deliver phase two in parts of the Forest of Dean and the Golden Valley Fastershire will significantly increase the number of rural homes and businesses that can access ultrafast broadband.”

We wouldn’t be at all surprised if Gigaclear had done something similar to its first contract in the area and offered to provide the majority of investment for the roll-out, although we won’t know for sure until the contract is officially signed within the next few weeks or months. A further contract to cover the rest of Gloucestershire and Herefordshire under phase two is expected to be announced during early 2017.

Naturally Gigaclear’s CEO, Matthew Hare, has expressed “excitement” at being chosen as the scheme’s preferred partner and he said that the provider would “aim to ensure the residents and businesses in the Forest of Dean and Golden Valley start to receive the same great service next year.”

All of this follows last week’s move by the Government to encourage more investment towards pure fibre optic Gigabit-capable broadband networks (here), which seems likely to encourage some local authorities to give greater weight towards such services. Mind you the new fund is not specifically focused on reaching poorly served rural areas and has wider applications.

Rural areas also tend to be very expensive to tackle and thus FTTP/H solutions won’t be affordable everywhere, so we still expect to see most of the future contracts in other counties adopting a wider variety of technologies in order to deliver on the original “superfast broadband” (24-30Mbps+) targets rather than Gigabit expectations (1000Mbps+).