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UPDATE North Yorkshire UK Confirm £21m to Expand Superfast Broadband

Tuesday, Sep 8th, 2015 (8:26 pm) - Score 727

The Superfast North Yorkshire project has revealed that a further £21m is to be spent on expanding superfast broadband (24Mbps+) connectivity to 95% of local premises across the county. As a result discussions are now taking place with BT in order to “draw up contracts for the start of phase three“.

As a quick recap the first phase of the SFNY scheme officially completed in May 2015 (here), which should have made “fibre broadband” (FTTC/P) services available to 90% of local premises (86% with access to “superfast” speeds of 24Mbps+).

On top of that a new £8m+ Phase 2 Superfast Extension Programme (SEP) contract, which will benefit an additional 11,000 premises and push “superfast broadband” coverage from 86% to 90% of the county by late 2016, is already underway.

Fast forward to today and the council’s latest announcement promises that “up to” £13m will be released from the authority’s own funds and £8m will come from national (Broadband Delivery UK) and European governments.

Apparently the new funding is designed to bring “high-speed, high-quality broadband” connections to 95% of premises across the county and the language suggests that it’s for a third roll-out phase, although their press release is somewhat vague (here).

Mackenzie, North Yorkshire’s Executive Member for Broadband, said:

This is an enviable record, which makes North Yorkshire the leading authority in the country for the reach of its high-speed broadband programme. We can celebrate our success so far, but this additional investment reflects the authority’s determination to ensure that all of our taxpayers – communities and businesses – benefit from high-speed connectivity.

We want North Yorkshire to be the premier place for people to live and to do business and we recognize that access to high-speed broadband is vitally important to the economic prosperity of the county.

With this extra funding, we will be able to penetrate to the more remote parts of our very rural county, to communities and businesses which hitherto had little hope of reaping the advantages and rewards of high-speed internet access.”

It’s worth noting the final paragraph of the press release, which states: “Of the remaining 5% of premises that will not get superfast broadband during this next phase, the authority is confident that up to 3% will still benefit from fibre broadband at high speeds and is determined that all of North Yorkshire will have access to a good level of broadband quality and speed.” We take this to mean that phase 3 will deliver 95% “superfast” and 98% “fibre broadband” (inc. sub-24Mbps+ speeds).

However the Government’s Broadband Delivery UK programme has yet to announce any phase 3 funding plans or allocations, which suggests to us that they’ll use some of what was originally allocated for phase 2.

UPDATE 9th September 2015

A quick look at the councils website and a recent meeting document confirms that SFNY’s Phase 3 is broadly still part of BDUK’s Phase 2 Superfast Extension Programme, which is the one that committed an additional £250m across the UK to boost superfast broadband coverage to 95%. Otherwise here are some other highlights from the document.

SFNY Meeting Document Highlights (Phase 3)

* BT have an obligation to ensure that every premise in the Intervention Area will receive more than 2Mbps, with a cap on the use of satellite of no more than 2% of premises in the Intervention Area. It seems they won’t want Satellite being used for everything, which is good.

* Current national take-up of superfast broadband in the national commercial areas is just over 20.8% after almost 5 years of NGA broadband being available. In comparison, take-up in the North Yorkshire Intervention Area after 30 months is 26.5%. This rises to over 30% when adjusted to account for cabinets where service has been available for more than 18 months. Based on this data the forecast is that take up will reach 30% by the end of 2015.

* It’s estimated that around 21,370 premises could be put within reach of faster broadband as part of Phase 3.

* BT are proposing early payment of Phase 1 Overage (i.e. clawback), with an assumption of 30% take up, and this equates to £7.8m of additional funding that can be recycled immediately (it’s estimated [conservatively] this alone could help put NGA broadband within reach of 5,000 premises). Apparently “all Overage beyond this will revert back to NYCC as per the current SFNY Contract“.

* The estimated average subsidy per premise for Phase 3 is £591 per premise if the recycled advanced Overage value is excluded, but if £7.8m Advanced Overage is included as new funding, the average cost per NGA premise for Phase 3 is £956 and £302 for all Phases combined.

On top of that we also get a breakdown of the phases and proposed broadband speeds vs coverage, which is slightly different from what has been promised in past and present press releases (e.g. the 84% “superfast” under Phase 1 is less than the 86% originally touted).

Phase Greater than 25 Mbps (Superfast) Between 10 and 25 Mbps Between 2 and 10Mbps
Phase 1 84% 10% 6%
Phase 2 88% 8% 4%
Phase 3 95% 2% – 4% 1% – 3%

Finally, the report says “it is unlikely that the [phase 3] deployment will be complete before” the end of 2018/19.

Mark-Jackson
By Mark Jackson
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and .
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