Devon and Somerset UK Update on Phase 2 Full Fibre Rollout
The Connecting Devon and Somerset (CDS) programme has today issued a progress update on their new Phase 2 contracts with ISPs Airband, Wessex Internet and Truespeed, which are worth a combined £80m (including £23.6m of public investment) and aim to improve broadband coverage to 56,396 premises (mostly rural areas).
The previous Open Mark Review (OMR) in 2019, which helped to identify any existing or planned coverage from “superfast broadband” (30Mbps+) networks, found around 115,000 premises that still couldn’t access or won’t be able to get superfast speeds for years.
The new Phase 2 contracts, covering a total of 6 regional LOTS, were officially award in December 2020 to help tackle some of that (here). As a result more than 56,000 homes and businesses can expect to gain access to a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network and that’s all due for completion in 2024. Just to recap..
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The Contracts
— Airband will be expanding its full fibre coverage into rural areas of Somerset West and Taunton, parts of Sedgemoor, East Devon, as well as areas of Mid Devon, South Hams and Teignbridge. This reflects about 37,500 premises and includes roughly £25.5m of public investment.
— Truespeed will be working in B&NES (Bath & North East Somerset), North Somerset, Mendip and part of Sedgemoor. This reflects over 15,170 premises and includes roughly £6.7m of public investment.
— Wessex Internet will deliver in rural communities of South Somerset. This reflects a little over 3,600 premises and includes roughly £4.7m of public investment.
The first live connections for most of this aren’t expected to appear until the autumn because it often takes a fair bit of time for operators, after securing a contract, to conduct various engineering surveys, secure wayleaves and start the initial civil engineering work. Nevertheless, CDS has today published a useful little progress update, which we’ve simplified down to the most useful bits below (we’ve covered a little of this before).
CDS March 2021 Progress Update (Phase 2)
— Airband
Airband is due to start construction of its first link for the new network in July – this will take place in Staplegrove and Monkton in Somerset, while in Devon it will include Powderham, and the area between Tiverton and Nomansland. Survey work is underway in these areas, and due to start imminently in Taunton, Halberton and Bradninch. It’s anticipated that properties in Staplegrove and Monkton will be the first to be connected by around September.
Airband has already provided superfast access to 18,700 homes and businesses across Devon and Somerset and its latest full fibre programme will extend its network to a further 40,150 premises.
— Truespeed
Truespeed has begun its primary “backhaul” connection in Bath, Kingston Seymour, Wells, Saltford, and Nunney, and it anticipates that by this autumn the first premises in each of these areas will be connected. It also plans to publish its detailed rollout plan this summer.
— Wessex Internet
Wessex Internet is due to start building the first links to its network in the Galhampton area of South Somerset in mid-April. This main framework, known as the “backhaul network” will connect to the company’s nearest pre-existing infrastructure in Yarlington. The first live connections will be up and running from this coming autumn in North and South Barrow, Woolston and surrounding areas.
CDS is also currently completing a refresh of its Open Market Review (OMR), which was carried out before going out to tender in February 2020. This has to be double-checked after the contract is awarded to ensure any areas earmarked by CDS for coverage are not in the plans of commercially funded programmes. This enables public funding to be spent where the need is greatest.
CDS, BDUK and the contractor carrying out the work can decide if the public money should be redeployed to another area in need of subsidised coverage. However, some limited “overbuilding“, overlapping commercially built networks, can still happen in some areas “where it provides the most cost-effective route” (as well as sometimes at the edges of a network’s coverage).
Councillor David Hall (Somerset), CDS Board Member, said:
“A huge amount of work goes into planning the network prior to construction starting, and it’s essential work to ensure the CDS investment can achieve maximum impact to provide homes and businesses with a future-proof broadband network. While this does take time, it’s great to see the companies looking to make a start on expanding the fibre network in the CDS region. Wessex Internet alone will be constructing around 300 kilometres of fibre in South Somerset over the next three years which has to be applauded.”
We should point out that a lot of separate commercial deployments of gigabit-capable broadband services are also taking place across the two counties, including from the ISPs mentioned above and various others like Openreach, Virgin Media, Gigaclear and Jurassic Fibre etc.
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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, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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No mention of the G-word who are building in some places.
I wonder if the CDS programme will complete before the next ice age sets in? No doubt the existing programme team and councillors will still be there to oversee “progress”! 😉
Don’t worry Starlink will dominate the south west. BT / OR and the government have completely ignored the south west. I see stickers all over the green cabinets stating superfast broadband has been installed. What utter rubbish.
Speeds here are terrible.
FTTP is non-existent. If your lucky to get Virgin then you are LUCKY.
The more rural areas will benefit from Starlink massively.
I would set up my own network in my village or farm and wave goodbye to the fixed ageing copper lines.
What county are you in?
Get off my land
CDS chose to not accept contract 2 offer from BT as they wanted a faster delivery sooner
years later and 1 or 2 contracts later (both BDUK and therefore part government funded) there are only slightly further forward that they were 4 years ago. the CDS debacle has been well documented by CDS – so i assume you are new to this forum
I live in the southern part of Devon. Speeds are inconsistent, street to street.
The more rural-ish parts, out of major towns, Exeter, Plymouth, Torbay are not very well serviced.
Virgin has been installing FTTP however it’s a slow uptake and not every street has it.
Some of the cabinets are full up and a BT engineer I know said once it’s full it’s a no go until they finally get around to putting in a bigger cabinet or converting it to fibre. It’s mostly the exchange and major routes that are getting fibre. FTTC is ongoing but again slow.
My point was that Starlink with it’s expansion will be a first choice for many who can’t get above 36mb especially those in the rural-ish parts.
100+mb now, by Starlink, is way better than anything BT / OR can offer.
The Beta program states it’s targeting the area mid to late 2021. Far quicker than the OR network. Once the price comes down it’s going to dominate, especially if people have to pay for the equipment. It keeps customers fixed to the company if you have had to out lay to buy the dishy. Farms and smaller towns will definitely benefit.
A lot of 3rd party ISP’s don’t offer a service so it’s really down to BT, Talk talk, Vodaphone, Sky using the OR network.
To be honest I haven’t followed the CDS debacle. But I can guess it didn’t go well. You only have to look at the Dawlish rail line to see what a mess the Government and private businesses (even those that are funded partly by the Government) do about necessary infrastructure.
Is broadband a necessary part of the UK infrastructure.
Just for clarity I have Virgin FTTP so I’m lucky but the surrounding roads do not.
I would consider Starlink if the price and service was right.
What still needs to be answered is why uptake is so low in areas where the CDS Phase 2 contract didn’t collapse? Still hovering at around 10% last time I checked, despite having been ‘complete’ for a couple of years now. The national average is nearer 60%. What has gone wrong..
Cos we don’t need that broadenband thing ere.
The CDS provider in my area (Truespeed) have an 18 month contract. If you move house in that period and they cannot supply you at the new address, you have to pay for the remainder of the contract. Thats a major disincentive as far as Im concerned so I stick with my 4G (thanks Three!). Jurassic Fibre, serving the lucky people around Exeter, have similar prices but only a 30 day rolling contract. Thats the way to pull in customers…