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Better Broadband for Nottinghamshire Rollout Preps £1.23m Extension

Friday, Jul 21st, 2017 (4:35 pm) - Score 533

The Nottinghamshire County Council (NCC) in England has published an update on their development of a third contract, which would use £1.23 million of public investment to push “superfast broadband” (24Mbps+) availability beyond the current target and towards universal coverage.

At present the existing Better Broadband for Nottinghamshire project with Openreach (BT) has already helped to extend FTTC/P based superfast broadband to reach over 95% of local premises (here) and the current contract 2 work expects to hit 98% coverage by September 2018.

However a recent meeting of the Council’s Policy Committee has adopted the new definition of 30Mbps+ for “superfast broadband” and confirmed that 16,505 premises across Nottinghamshire will, once contract 2 completes, still be left unserved by a superfast capable network. However it’s noted that 4,500 of these “already have speeds in excess 24Mbps but less than 30Mbps” and will thus be excluded from contract 3 (i.e. the jump isn’t enough of a “step change” in performance).

Nottinghamshire Update (Report Extract)

The funds available (even if Nottinghamshire County Council is successful in securing EU funds and introducing further clawback funds) will not be sufficient to reach all of the remaining properties. It is therefore necessary to prioritise where to target investment.

Of the circa 12,000 properties remaining, 50% are within the two district areas of Newark & Sherwood and Bassetlaw. Maps in annexe A of this report illustrate the distribution of these properties. As the least well-served areas of Nottinghamshire, it is proposed that contract 3 targets properties within these two district areas and prioritised as follows:

* The most rural properties – recognising that rural properties are least likely to benefit from commercial developments such as Openreach‟s G.Fast Technology (new technology which allows Ultrafast speeds (greater than 100Mbps) over existing copper lines) and Virgin media‟s Project Lightning deployment (£3Bn investment extending their Ultrafast fibre optic network across the country to 17 million premises).

* Business properties – acknowledging the economic benefits which superfast broadband can offer businesses, such as providing access to new markets, improving customer relationships and operational savings.

* The specific properties that the contract will serve will be subjected to Value for Money modelling to determine the highest number of properties which can be achieved for the funds available. The modelling will be undertaken by the successful bidder. As part of the tender process, the bidders will be provided with a list of properties and asked to model a solution.

To provide the necessary rigor, it is proposed that rurality and business priorities be factored into this process through a scoring system which would involve assigning a higher score to the most rural and to business properties.

A state aid Public Consultation on the proposals will commence by the end of this month and it’s hoped that the contract can then be awarded by 15th January 2018, with the roll-out beginning during April 2018 and ending one year later (dependent upon the chosen supplier). The tender process itself will be opened up to all providers, which should help to attract alternative networks (AltNet).

We should point out that the allocated £1.23m is also expected to be boosted by additional clawback from BT (contract 1 + 2) and public funding from other sources, such as the EU. Apparently clawback from contract 1 is already being used to support contract 2 (contract 1 efficiencies and clawback has so far resulted in £4.8m becoming available for reinvestment).

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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