BDUK Start New Batch of Phase 3A Project Gigabit Coverage Reviews

The Building Digital UK team has started a new batch of Open Market Reviews (OMR) under Phase 3A of the Government’s £5bn Project Gigabit broadband rollout, which will examine network coverage in Herefordshire, Cheshire, Gloucestershire and Lincolnshire and East Riding.

Just to recap. The project seeks to ensure that a minimum of 85%+ of UK premises can access a gigabit-capable broadband ISP connection by the end of 2025, before possibly reaching “nationwide” (c.99%) coverage by the end of 2030 (here and here).

Project Gigabit itself will be targeted at upgrading those in the final 20% of the UK (5-6 million premises), where commercial investment alone tends to fail (i.e. the hardest to reach rural and some sub-urban areas). But so far only £1.2bn of the proposed funding has actually been released for this, and the Government claims that more will follow if the industry shows it can deliver (i.e. depending upon the response to their procurements).

However, the first step – before procurements can begin and contracts be awarded to suppliers – is to identify precisely which areas are not expected to benefit from gigabit speeds under existing commercial builds or plans over the next 3 years (and beyond, if available). Only once you have the answer to that, can you identify where public funding will be needed to help address market failure.

The above process starts with an Open Market Review (OMR) and BDUK has just published a new batch (here), which covers all the aforementioned areas and is open for network operators to respond by 5pm on 6th May 2022. We’ve summarised the currently proposed plan for each of the areas below.

New Batch of Phase 3A OMRs for England – April 2022

Herefordshire (Lot 15)

Estimated contract commencement date: Jan – Mar 2024
Indicative contract value: £30m – £60m
Estimated number of uncommercial premises: 23,700

Cheshire (Lot 17)

Estimated contract commencement date: Jan – Mar 2024
Indicative contract value: £85m – £144m
Estimated number of uncommercial premises: 74,300

Gloucestershire (Lot 18)

Estimated contract commencement date: Jan – Mar 2024
Indicative contract value: £40m – £80m
Estimated number of uncommercial premises: 44,700

Lincolnshire (including NE Lincolnshire and N Lincolnshire) and East Riding (Lot 23)

Estimated contract commencement date: Apr – Jun 2024
Indicative contract value: £106m – £180m
Estimated number of uncommercial premises: 105,700

We should point out that BDUK recently soft launched a new Rolling National Open Market Review, which should in the future make it easier for them to keep track of new developments in commercial builds of gigabit broadband networks. But in the meantime, they still have to run through the existing OMR and PR process.