Positive Feedback for Broadband Delivery UK’s Market Test Pilots

Recently the Government’s Broadband Delivery UK office gave an update on the progress of their 7 Market Test Pilots, which are testing alternative solutions (fibre optic, satellite, wireless etc.) for bringing broadband to remote rural areas. The good news is that early customers appear to be happy.

The event itself actually happened over a week ago and its big news was of course confirmation of a new broadband Satellite subsidy scheme (here), although at the time we overlooked another interesting piece of information concerning the wider pilots.

At present BDUK’s programme is focused on bringing superfast broadband (24Mbps+) speed to 95% of premises by 2017/18, while the £8m Market Test Pilots (£10m was originally allocated) were setup last year (here) to establish the viability and funding requirements that might be needed in order to help connect those in the final 5%.

Most of the pilots have now been running for a few months and as such BDUK has already gained a bit of limited feedback from a group of 83 respondents, which found that all but 2% seemed to be happy and said they would keep the service after the trial had completed; assuming no change to its price (sadly they didn’t split the results down by pilot).

Furthermore BDUK’s presentation at the event stated that the pilots “have clearly demonstrated that smaller suppliers can deliver effective solutions in the remaining areas,” which points to the exercise becoming a successful one.

After that BDUK said they would make sure that Local Authorities (councils etc.) knew about the alternatives, although it remains to be seen how many of them will even listen.. particularly in light of BT’s new commitment to a universal broadband speed of at least 5-10Mbps by around 2020 (here).

On the other hand BDUK’s focus for the final 5% is likely to be on delivering 24Mbps+ speeds and BT has already shown, through the Devon and Somerset situation (here), that they won’t sign a contract if it’s going to be excessively expensive or where the time-scale is far too difficult to meet. As such more councils may need to start taking AltNets seriously if they want to fix all of their coverage gaps.