Quickline Expand Rural Project Gigabit Broadband Build in Yorkshire UK

The Government has published a Project Gigabit contract modification notice for Quickline’s deployment of gigabit broadband across ‘West and Parts of North Yorkshire’ (Lot 8) in England. The change expands the number of contracted premises due to be covered by full fibre (FTTP) to 28,952 (up by 2,642) and increases the public subsidy to £65.47m (up by £3.195m).

The contract for the West and Parts of North Yorkshire (Lot 8) was originally awarded all the way back in February 2024 (here). Since then Quickline has already completed their deployment to 15,700 premises under this contract, which reflects a completion level of 54% (here). The progress has been good as the build phase for these contracts usually runs for around 4 years.

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 various different reasons – informed by regular ‘Open Market Reviews’ of existing UK build plans. For example, commercial operators may expand or reduce their roll-outs in the same region(s), which can reduce or grow the scope for public funding 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 Lot 8 for Quickline is another example of this, albeit a relatively modest change in the grander scheme of things.

The government rarely provides much detail on these changes, although the modification notice does state the following: “The awarded contract value has increased by £3,195,012 to £65,470,012 from the original value of £60,911,000. The modification includes an addition of 2,847 initial scope premises, the removal of 205 initial scope premises and 4,521 deferred scope premises, resulting in a net addition of 2,642 premises. The awarded premises have increased by 2,642; however, this is offset by the removal of the deferred scope resulting in a net total of 28,952 premises.”

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 – on this occasion it’s a positive development. 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.

Quickline itself currently aims to extend gigabit-capable broadband to a further 360,000 UK premises across thousands of rural communities (roughly 170k via publicly funded projects and almost 200k from commercial builds). The provider recently reported that they ended 2025 with 200,000 premises passed via full fibre (plus 200k more via wireless, although not all of those are gigabit-capable).