North Yorkshire UK Prep Phase 4 Superfast Broadband Rollout

The Superfast Broadband North Yorkshire (SFNY) project, which has been working with Openreach (BT) to extend “superfast broadband” (24Mbps+) via FTTC and FTTP to reach 94% of premises in the county by June 2021 (currently 91%), has begun the process to find a supplier for their £12.5m Phase 4 roll-out contract.

The current SFNY project is managed on behalf of the County Council by NYnet, it’s 100% owned broadband company, and is financed by a mixture of funds from the Government (Building Digital UK), European Union, BT and the County Council itself (the £12.5m mentioned above is all state aid but that may increase if private investment is added later).

As we reported last month (here), SFNY recently completed their latest  Open Market Review (OMR) to help establish existing and planned (within the next 3 years) coverage of related networks. The consultation identified a significant number of remaining “white NGA” areas (38,038 premises) with inadequate broadband (mostly rural areas).

The local authority’s “vision” for their new Phase 4 contract is thus to get “as close as possible to 100%” coverage of “superfast broadband,” although in reality this latest phase is almost certain to only involve “gigabit-capable” Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) technology (in keeping with UK Government policy) and they’d need several times more than £12.5m to truly hit 100%.

Cllr Don Mackenzie, Executive Member for Access, said:

“This is very good news for residents and businesses in our county. The last few months have shown how important good broadband is for us all, and the County Council’s latest investment in IT infrastructure could not come at a better time, particularly for our more rural communities, who would not otherwise receive this service.”

The plan now is to complete the Phase 4 procurement process and announce the supplier by December 2020; no doubt the build stage would then begin in early 2021. We also strongly suspect that their £12.5m includes a chunk of clawback from BT (i.e. public money returned from earlier contracts due to high take-up).