UPDATE Shock as Gigaclear Shelve Full Fibre Broadband Plan in Rural Worcestershire

A number of rural communities in Worcestershire (England) have been left to continue suffering from slow broadband speeds after Gigaclear abandoned their remaining commercial 1Gbps FTTP deployment plans due to problems with economic viability and permits.

According to the local authority, Gigaclear’s demand-led commercial model had originally proposed to roll-out their ultrafast Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network into the southern parts of the Malvern Hills District, as well as east and west of the Bromsgrove district (around Alvechurch, Rowney Green and Dodford) and around Rushock and Upton Warren (North of Wychavon and South of the Wyre Forest districts).

Unfortunately, after a year of promises and postponements, residents in some of the associated rural communities have been informed by the Worcestershire County Council (WCC) that Gigaclear has chosen not to go ahead with their planned roll-out.

Andrew Beard, Resident of Purshall Green, told ISPreview.co.uk:

“Gigaclear after a year of postponements have just pulled out of all Worcestershire projects, as it is supposedly no longer commercially viable. This has meant our community has been left out of all Worcester county council development plans since 2013.

It will be several years until we are included again and our community of 1500 houses will be left with 1Mbps broadband for the rest of this decade. Communication is terrible, they have not even apologized or contacted anyone in our area to explain why. Once the sales staff canvass the area and signed us up, we did not receive any contact, their development officers refuse to be contacted to discuss the project.”

Some aspects of Gigaclear’s deployment in the county had already begun (around Rowney Green), although ISPreview.co.uk understands that the work was stopped after the Worcestershire Highways authority raised concerns about the unforeseen closure of certain roads during the planning stages (including related safety issues).

Apparently a failure to resolve the above problem and issues with commercial viability appear to have now torpedoed the entire plan.

Steve Ashton, Boss of WCC’s Broadband Project, said:

“Worcestershire County Council has been informed by Gigaclear that their proposed plans to commercially deploy fibre broadband in the areas in and surrounding ‘Dodford’ and ‘Hanley Castle’ have been reviewed and will be removed from their programme, as Gigaclear deem it is no longer commercially viable for their investment in Worcestershire to continue.

Deployment already underway by Gigaclear in and around the ‘Rowney Green Cabinet 1’ area will continue as planned, however they will not deploy in the ‘Weatheroak Hill’ and ‘Portway’ areas. Worcestershire County Council has worked with Gigaclear over recent months to fully explore potential solutions.

Worcestershire County Council is disappointed by Gigaclear’s decision and had previously asked Gigaclear to commit to a detailed planning session, to which we understood they had agreed. Since Gigaclear’s announcement to withdraw, WCC has written to Gigaclear requesting they reconsider their decision.

Should Gigaclear remain committed to their decision to fully withdraw from Worcestershire then WCC would need to review the impact of this on the current broadband programme ‘intervention areas’ (areas eligible for future public funding) moving forward.”

A Spokesperson for Gigaclear told ISPreview.co.uk:

“We have been negotiating with Worcestershire Highways on a build method that allows the deployment to remain commercially viable, as we do in all other counties. At this stage we have not been able to reach agreement and have therefore stopped the build works.”

The news comes only days after Gigaclear won the UK ISPA’s ‘Best Rural Broadband‘ award for their “pioneering approach” to rolling out ultrafast “full fibre” broadband into some of England’s most remote rural areas (here).

Meanwhile the Superfast Worcestershire project, which cannot currently promise that any of the affected communities will be able to benefit from their scheme, is continuing to focus on their effort with Openreach (BT) to roll-out “superfast broadband” (24Mbps+) to “more than” 95% of the county by the end of 2017 and they have plans to go further (here).

It will be interesting to see whether or not Gigaclear bids on any of the future state aid supported contracts in Worcestershire or if too many bridges have now been burnt.

UPDATE 27th July 2017

The above situation may also support some of the findings in a recent report from Analysys Mason, which was published by the Broadband Stakeholders Group (BSG) and warned that variations between how different local authorities handle noticing and permit schemes needed to be resolved (here).

Ian Adkins, Principal at Analysys Mason, told ISPreview.co.uk:

“This is the first significant example of how the costs associated with government bureaucracy have undone a viable economic case for deployment. Our study highlighted inconsistencies with how local authorities interpret guidance and make decisions related to street works and permissions.

Unless these issues are resolved the impact on national ambitions for fibre deployment to the scale of 10 million premises will be dramatic. They will have little chance of being achieved.

…

We are aware from our advisory work on broadband network investment with other local authorities, such as Essex County Council, that Gigaclear have successfully installed sizeable FTTP networks in rural areas. It seems those local authorities that can resolve street works and planning issues will be the first to benefit from new telecoms infrastructure deployment.”