Openreach Tweaks Call Off 1 Project Gigabit Broadband Rollout Contract UPDATE

The Building Digital UK (BDUK) agency and Openreach (BT) have revised downward their £149.7m Call Off 1 Project Gigabit contract – covering parts of Lancashire, North Wiltshire, South Gloucestershire, West and Mid-Surrey, Staffordshire, West Berkshire and Hertfordshire. This originally aimed to extend full fibre (FTTP) to 54,336 premises in remote areas, but will now reach 51,821.

Just to recap. The original contract was agreed all the way back in August 2024 and formed part of Openreach’s Single Supplier Framework agreement with BDUK (here), which saw them being chosen to deliver all of Project Gigabit’s Cross-Regional (Type C) procurements.

However, it’s important to remember that such contracts are not static and their scope, as well as committed levels of public funding, can change over time for a number of different reasons – informed by regular ‘Open Market Reviews’ of existing UK deployment plans. For example, commercial operators may expand or reduce their roll-out plans in the same region(s), which can reduce or grow the scope for public investment within those same contracted areas.

The contracted operator could also find the deployment to be more expensive, or possibly even cheaper, than previously envisaged. Such adjustments may occur due to changes in build costs and interest rates / inflation, as well as any unexpected obstacles to street works or greater efficiencies of build than planned or expected.

Suffice to say, there can be various reasons why the contracted scope of related builds and the level of allocated public funding may change a bit over time. The recent modification to Call Off 1 is another example of this, albeit a relatively small change in the grander scheme of things.

The official modification notice doesn’t provide much context for the change (we have asked Openreach to clarify) and simply states: “The awarded contract value has decreased from the original value of £149,700,000 to £146,905,866 … This is a cost change of -£2,794,134. The awarded premises have decreased (descoped) from the original 54,336 to 51,821. This is a scope change of -2,515.”

In short, Project Gigabit’s contracts can go through a lot of changes on their way to completion, and the above is an expected part of that evolution. The catch is that there may be further changes in the future, which could go in a different direction, so it’s not always easy to tell what the final picture will be until you actually reach the end.

UPDATE 1:15pm

We’ve had it confirmed that this is merely due to the expansion of commercially delivered gigabit broadband coverage, which obviously reduces the need for state aid supported deployments in some areas. But we understand that Openreach plan to more than compensate for this by expanding Call Off 1 to cover several thousands more premises in the near future, in different areas. As above, it’s all part and parcel of the usual dynamics of such contracts.