Cotswolds Broadband Tender for GBP6.8m FTTP Rollout in West Oxfordshire

The Cotswolds Broadband project, which has long planned to roll-out an open access 100Mbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network to the majority of homes and businesses in West Oxfordshire (Chipping Norton), has now secured £6.8m in funding and is preparing to issue its Invitation To Tender for a supplier.

At present the central Better Broadband for Oxfordshire project is currently only working with BT, which is extending the telecom giants local superfast broadband access (24Mbps+) to 90% of the county by the end of 2015 (potentially rising to 95% by 2017 under BDUK’s extension programme).

Readers might recall that the county situation changed in May 2014 after the West Oxfordshire District Council agreed to put some of its own public funding towards the non-BT alternative Cotswolds Broadband project (here), which predominantly focused on the Chipping Norton area.

Today that same project looks set to celebrate after announcing that it had secured a commitment for £3.2 million of private investment alongside the previously announced investment of £1.6 million from West Oxfordshire District Council (WODC) and a grant of up to £1.6 million from Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK). It is one of the rare non-BT deals to win funding from BDUK.

As a result Cotswolds Broadband said that they’d now secured the initial capital required to provide “up to 100 per cent of households and businesses across West Oxfordshire with access to superfast broadband“, with work commencing March 2015.

Hugo Pickering, Cotswolds Broadband CEO, said:

“We are very pleased to be able to confirm this private investment, which helps us to realise the collective ambitions of central government, the local authority and the local communities. We now move to the next phase of completing the picture of superfast broadband in West Oxfordshire.”

Cllr Richard Langridge, Cabinet Member for Communities, said:

“This is excellent news and a significant step towards our goal of achieving as close as possible to 100% broadband coverage in West Oxfordshire. We are delighted that the confidence that we and the Government have shown in this project is being matched by private investors.”

Apparently the necessary Invitation To Tender (ITT) is to be issued shortly, which will define the premises within West Oxfordshire and invite companies and consortia to tender for the project (i.e. choose a supplied etc.).

As previously reported the network is likely to be a mix of pure fibre optic connectivity and some fixed wireless broadband provision, focusing on areas outside of BT’s existing BDUK footprint.

UPDATE 2:09pm

In related news Broadway Partners has announced that Mark Melluish will be joining as Managing Director with immediate effect. Mark is said to bring extensive experience to the business from his 30 years in the telecoms and broadband industry. He has most recently been providing independent consultancy to Local Authorities for their broadband plans and implementation, following senior positions at Rutland Telecom, of which he was the founder, and at Nokia.