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EC Probe State Aid Complaint vs Buckinghamshire FTTP Broadband Project

Monday, Sep 5th, 2016 (12:21 am) - Score 1,390

The European Commission’s Directorate-General for Competition has opened an investigation into the Aylesbury Vale Broadband project over its use of State Aid to roll-out an ultra-fast FTTH broadband network in rural Buckinghamshire, which is despite the presence of a competing wireless network.

The publicly funded effort, which was initially supported by £200,000 from the local Aylesbury Vale District Council (AVDC) and has recently been given another boost of £500,000 to help the network expand, has already made good progress to reach three villages (Granborough, North Marston and Swanbourne) and they hope to cover a total of ten by the end of 2016.

Customers of the new Fibre-to-the-Premise (FTTH/P) network usually pay from £30 per month for an unlimited 30Mbps (symmetrical) service, which rises to £38 if you want 100Mbps or £135 for the fastest 300Mbps package. A one-off connection fee of £150 also applies via the self-install method.

The Managing Director of AVB, Andrew Mills, explained: “AVB is a “community driven” company – a hybrid of Gigaclear and B4RN. We call it community driven for whilst it is a commercial company its primary objective is to expand its fibre network to deliver ultra-fast broadband speeds to all of Aylesbury Vale. To guarantee this objective is kept and the loaned funds are used solely for this purpose, AVDC has received 95% equity in the company.”

However problems emerged last year after two local fixed wireless ISPs (Village Networks [VN] and Rapid Rural) said they were unhappy at the use of public money, which they claimed had enabled AVB to roll-out into some of the same areas as their own planned “superfast broadband” capable networks. VN later lodged a formal letter of complaint with AVDC (here).

At the time Andrew Mills said, “We are also aware that Village Networks has previously met with AVDC to present and discuss their proposal to deliver super-fast broadband to Aylesbury Vale but we understand their proposal was based on a pure grant subsidy rather than a loan or equity model.” Mills also said that AVB had “consulted closely” with the local Government and BT supported Connected Counties scheme on their own roll-out.

Nearly a year has now passed since the original dispute erupted and there’s finally been a new development. The boss of Village Networks, Roger Carey, informed ISPreview.co.uk over the weekend that the EC’s Directorate-General for Competition has found “sufficient merit” in the case to warrant an investigation.

Roger Carey said:

“AVB’s business model calls for network coverage of such scale that it will have to take business from existing self-funded commercial providers – which is why, although it claims to be a ‘pure fibre’ network, ‘with no old technology, and no aerials’ it’s now approaching communities already covered by superfast fixed wireless operators, offering to connect them by, er, fixed wireless. They’re offering something called FTTM, which stands for Fibre To The Mast. AVB claims this is different and better to anyone else’s wireless. Other fixed wireless operators find this curious, not least because AVB do not seem to have any masts or towers.

The AVB project started out as a decent but heroic attempt to help bring better broadband to rural communities in the Vale. A noble cause which everyone, including us, supports. But that project has acquired some behaviour which can only be described as inappropriate for one owned and operated by a local authority, and it doesn’t serve them or their cause in any way.

For as long as AVDC and AVB present a publicly subsidised direct threat to existing providers – and their subscribers – in the Vale of Aylesbury, we’ll take whatever proper and fair steps we can to protect those interests. The EC complaint is a regrettable distraction from our core business, but it’s what any responsibly-run business would do.”

At this point it’s important to remember that the United Kingdom is still beholden to EU State Aid rules, which are designed to prevent EU member states from distorting competition through abuse of public funding etc.

Meanwhile the Brexit vote to leave the EU isn’t likely to be formally implemented for a few more years (possibly not until around 2020) and even then we might still have to respect some of the same measures. But if AVB are worried about any of this then it doesn’t appear to be showing.

According to Andrew Mills, AVB has not yet been informed of the EC’s decision to investigate, although they suggest that it’s “routine” for the Commission to investigate any complaint made to them and they “welcome any investigation“.

Andrew Mills, MD of AVB, told ISPreview.co.uk:

“We look forward to putting this complaint behind us, so we can continue to focus on delivering ultra-fast fibre broadband to residents of Aylesbury Vale who have little hope of ever receiving super-fast speeds, let alone ultra-fast.”

Competition investigations by the EC sometimes have a tendency to drag on for quite awhile before reaching a conclusion and as a result we might not learn the outcome of this one for a fair few months. By then AVB will probably have been able to reach its current target of ten villages and many residents, most of whom will be unaware of the dispute, will no doubt continue to welcome the new service.

UPDATE 10:17am

According to Roger Carey, the earlier claim by Andrew Mills (AVB) that VN submitted a proposal based on grant funding may not be entirely correct.

Roger Carey said:

“After AVB had been formed and commissioned, we complained. At a subsequent meeting, AVDC informally asked how much we would have charged to provide superfast coverage of the same area. We told them (it was substantially less than £200,000). That was clearly an academic after-the-event exercise. There was no tendering process, before or after AVB was formed, and that’s one of the reasons the EC has decided to open an investigation.”

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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