BT Based RCBF Funded UK Rural Broadband Schemes Still Going Ahead

The Government’s £20m Rural Community Broadband Fund (RCBF), which has been stalled for months because BT and local councils have controversially refused to share vital service speed and coverage (SCT) data with bidding altnet ISPs, is still alive in Northumberland (England). Naturally BT is running the project.

The RCBF fund was originally established as a semi-separate vehicle from the national Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) scheme, which could work alongside altnets and smaller community projects to help plug some of the superfast broadband gaps in remote rural areas (i.e. the final 5-10% of the country).

EU State Aid Rules prevent RCBF funding from being used to overlap an existing superfast broadband network, such as the one that BT is building through the BDUK process. But in order to avoid this altnets (smaller ISPs) need to know where BT’s network expects to go, except the incumbent regards this information as “commercially sensitive” (here) and the Government has said they probably won’t be able to publish it until after the BDUK scheme has ended.. in 2017.

In fairness the BDUK roll-out is dynamic, with events and complications on the ground frequently causing changes in strategy (sometimes this means more coverage than expected and other times less). As a result it’s always going to be difficult for BT to know what coverage it can achieve until the very end and as a commercial company they will want to protect that investment. Never the less a competent authority could easily overcome an issue like this but the desire to do so, perhaps borne out by a fear of further delays, does not appear to exist.

The latest twist, albeit an entirely predictable one, is that some RCBF projects are now going ahead and do look set to secure their grants. Good news, although naturally these are the projects that BT are taking part in because, of course, BT are the only ones with access to the necessary data to make it viable. We expect a few broken brick walls as BT’s harshest critics promptly begin bashing away with their heads.

The first is BT’s £1 million project to help around 1,500 local homes in the Northumberland town of Rothbury, which was earlier this year awarded £460,000 from the RCBF to help the operator roll-out its superfast broadband (FTTC/P) network to cover 98% of local homes and businesses by the end of 2014 (here).

The Rothbury Community Broadband Project, which claims to be “the first in the country to benefit from Defra’s Rural Community Broadband Fund” (ISPr ED: *must resist sarcasm*), will officially be launched by Owen Paterson MP, Secretary of State for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, on Monday 9th December 2013. Expect a lot of positive PR spin to follow.