UPDATE Berkshire Bodges Phase 2 BDUK Superfast Broadband Tender

In a curious development the West Berkshire Council in England has withdrawn a major tender that was issued to help find a supplier for Phase 2 of their Superfast Berkshire project, which is currently working with BT to roll-out a “high-speed fibre broadband” (FTTC/P) network to “around” 91% of local premises by the end of September 2015.

Phase 2 relates to the national Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) schemes £250m Superfast Extension Programme (SEP), which aims to make fixed line superfast broadband (24Mbps+) speeds available to 95% of “people in each local authority area” by 2017. Back in February 2014 a preliminary allocation of £3.56m in additional funding was made by BDUK to help Berkshire reach this target.

Since then the local authority has conducted another Open Market Review (July 2014) and State Aid Public Consultation process (September 2014), both of which have helped it to identify the next batch of areas that could be upgraded as part of their plans to extend the reach of superfast broadband connectivity.

Naturally all of this was then followed in late October 2014 by the launch of a new tender, which appeared to commit roughly £4.7m of local and some EU public funding to the enhanced scheme. But industry sources have since drawn ISPreview.co.uk’s attention to the fact that the tender has been abruptly cancelled. A separate note offers a clue as to the reason why.

Superfast Berkshire – Phase 2 Contract Cancellation Notice

“Please note that we have taken the decision not to proceed with this procurement for the following reasons: The notice published in the Office Journal of the European Union (365357-2014 (2014/S 206-365357)) on 25.10.2014 did not contain the requirement for the contracts to be divided into lots. Please note that we intend to shortly commence a new procurement process for these services. Thank you for your interest in this procurement.”

Sometimes it’s necessary to divide a tender into several lots, such as when different specifications may be required for parts of the project. At the same time contracting authorities cannot subdivide a contract into more sub threshold value lots in order to evade publication and competition.

In this case we don’t know the precise details for the cancellation and have called on the council to clarify the situation and whether the bodged tender will cause any delays to their Phase 2 deployment plans. On the other hand few expect anybody else except BT to be picked, much like other similar tenders have done across the UK.

Meanwhile Phase 1 of the scheme is continuing to progress and, at the most recent count on 15th December 2014, has already extended BT’s FTTC network to reach an extra 5,086 local homes and businesses via 28 new street cabinets. Overall Phase 1 expects to help an additional 20,000 premises by completion, which is on top of BT’s existing commercial roll-out that has already extended the service to most of the county (around 320,000 premises).

UPDATE 24th Dec 2014:

A spokesperson for Berkshire council has finally responded with the following statement: “The explanation is straightforward. For legal and procedural purposes it has been necessary to cancel our original broadband procurement notice, but this will be replaced immediately with a new notice with the same level of investment and designed to achieve the same outcomes. All companies that responded to our original notice have been informed of the reason the notice was withdrawn.”