BT Picked as Preferred Supplier for UK Isle of Wight Fibre Broadband Rollout

Despite concerns the Isle of Wight Council (IWC) in Southern England has now voted to approve BT as the “preferred supplier” for their local £7.6 million rollout of superfast broadband (FTTC/P), which should bring better Internet access to areas that have suffered due to a lack of investment.

The investment is intended to help around 20,000 premises where there’s either poor broadband connectivity or no commercial plans for a future upgrade to faster services, although the recommendation (5 cabinet members in favour and 3 abstained) might still have to be debated by the full council.

The project, which expects to complete its rollout around September 2015, will be funded by £3.09 million from the government’s Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) office, another £3.09 million from the local council and just £1.56 million will come from BT. The lower level of investment from BT allegedly reflects the limited number of premises in the project compared with other BDUK schemes.

Apparently the project is also based around a 20% take-up rate once the deployment is complete, which appears to include a clawback clause for the council should take-up exceed 20% in the 7 years following BT’s rollout (i.e. £375k would come back to the council for every 5% of take-up over the original 20%).

In addition a report from ON THE Wight states that an amendment to the policy was tabled, which will insist that 87% of homes and businesses in the intervention area receive a minimum download speed of 30Mbps and that 96% of the islands premises should benefit from a minimum of 24Mbps. By comparison the original design called for 99% to be covered by “fibre broadband” (FTTC/P), with 90% of premises in the “intervention area” being told to merely expect a download speed boost of 10Mbps+ above whatever they currently get.

The vote, which had originally been due to take place a month ago, was initially delayed due to competition fears and concern that BT’s contribution would only equate to about 24% of the total cost.. among other things (here); some of these issues were finally resolved last week (here), although local operator WightFibre (WightCable) remain bitterly opposed and have previously accused the IWC of being “biased in favour of BT”.

As usual we’ll have to wait a few months before the contract is signed and only then can we be 100% sure of the final funding, coverage and speed expectations. This assumes that BT will be happy to accept some or all of the recent changes.