Oxfordshire – £4.2m Savings from BDUK and BT Fibre Broadband Rollout

The local Better Broadband for Oxfordshire project, which has already helped to make superfast broadband (24Mbps+) available to 90% of the county and is now working towards the next 95% target by the end of 2017, confirms that £4.2m of public funding will be reinvested thanks to savings.

So far the original Phase One contract with BT, which has been busy expanding their FTTC/P based “fibre broadband” network into areas that might have otherwise been left to wait a very long time for any improvement, has managed to benefit around 80,000 premises in Oxfordshire and 64,500 of those are able to order a “superfast” (24Mbps+) service if they want.

The first contract had a total value of £25 million (£10m from Oxfordshire Council, £4m from Broadband Delivery UK and £11m from BT) and today’s update confirms that high take-up of the service (26.1% in the intervention area for Q1 2016) will result in £2.55m being returned by BT through clawback and a further £4.2m will also come back via savings (total £6.75m).

Sadly we’re not told precisely what those “savings” represent, although BT did deploy less of their more expensive FTTP solution in BDUK Phase 1 than some had predicted and in other cases it may simply cost less to upgrade an area than forecast. All of this is in keeping with BDUK’s recent confirmation that clawback and savings worth a total of £408m across the UK would be used on further expanding coverage (here).

Nick Carter, County Cabinet Member, said:

“This will enable fibre broadband access for even more households and businesses, including a number of the county’s smallest communities. When considered against the County Council’s initial £10m investment and BDUK’s £4m, this shows a terrific return and is evidence of the successful collaboration with our co-funding partner BT.

We’re currently evaluating feedback from the public consultation we ran in the Spring and will use the results to help us plan how best to invest the funds that are available.”

Steve Henderson, BT’s Regional Director for Broadband, said:

“More than 270,000 premises across Oxfordshire are now able to access faster fibre broadband as a result of BT’s own investment and the Better Broadband for Oxfordshire roll-out.”

It’s worth pointing out that a couple of additional extension contracts have already been signed and related deployments are now under-way. The first of those, which is worth £5.1m (£1.2m from BT, £1.95m from BDUK and the rest from local councils), was signed in February 2015 and aims to expand “fibre broadband” services to an additional 6,500 properties (here).

After that the a third £5.58m extension contract is being supported by £2 million from the Oxfordshire Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP), £120,000 from the South East Midlands LEP and Cherwell District Council, £168,000 from Oxford City Council, £2.2 million from BDUK and £1.1 million from BT. Some 4,600 properties will benefit from that one.

As such the £6.75m of funding (reinvestment) being highlighted today will instead be put towards future contracts that push beyond the current 95% coverage target (BDUK has hinted of a 97% UK coverage aspiration), as opposed to the ones that have already been agreed. The local authority is currently drawing up a plan, which should be announced in the not too distant future.

We should perhaps point out that the future roll-out in West Oxfordshire involves a completely separate project via the Cotswolds Broadband scheme (details), which will expand superfast broadband services to another 6,000 premises by May 2017.