UPD £1.7m Under Budget – BT’s Fibre Broadband Rollout on Isle of Wight

A new report has revealed that the joint £6.5m Broadband Delivery UK and Isle of Wight Council project to expand the coverage of BT’s “fibre broadband” (FTTC/P) network on the Isle of Wight (resides just off England’s central south coast) has come in under budget to the tune of £1.7m+.

The roll-out, which completed in May 2016 (here), aimed to extend the reach of “fibre broadband” to 99% of homes and business on the island (i.e. around 95% coverage of 24Mbps+ “superfast broadband“). This contract was originally funded by £1,423,197 from BT and £4,980,000 of public investment from the local authority and BDUK.

Overall the new report confirms that 109 new ‘up to’ 40-80Mbps capable FTTC Street Cabinets have gone live as part of the effort and some 20,254 premises benefited. As a result some 779 of those premises can theoretically receive a speed of between 24-30Mbps, while 3,880 could get 30-50Mbps and 13,421 are able to have upwards of 50Mbps+. Sadly 2,174 of those in the intervention area will only get sub-24Mbps speeds.

However it’s noted that the maximum cost of the contract ended up being just £4.8m, with BT investing the slightly higher figure of £1,537,893 and the public investment completing on the much lower figure of £3,258,821. In other words, there’s a huge underspend of £1.7m and an interesting hint that this could rise.

REPORT FOR SCRUTINY COMMITTEE (Extract)

The Scrutiny Committee may be interested to know that the final payment claim has been received from BT and our assurance work has been completed. Queries from our assurance have resulted in agreement with BT to reduce costs by at least £366k.

However, this work has also resulted in a query which has wider implications for other contracts nationally and this has therefore been referred to BDUK who have begun high level discussions with BT.

As a result, we are able to confirm a maximum cost of the contract as £4.8m, resulting in a public sector underspend of at least £1.7m. It is expected that the underspend will increase once the national issue is resolved.

As the public sector money is funding jointly from the IWC and BDUK, 50% will need to be returned to BDUK once agreed. However the rest and any future clawback (take-up in the intervention area has just passed 22.7%) could soon be put towards a further expansion of coverage on the island, but we’re still waiting to see a concrete plan on that.

We should point out that the premises to have benefited from this project are in addition to the 51,000 or so that Openreach’s (BT) fibre network can already reach via commercial investment. Side note: The island itself is home to around 140,000 people.

UPDATE 2nd Nov 2016

A representative for BDUK informs us that the “query” relates to some high-cost street cabinets and is a local issue that is being resolved at a local level. However even BDUK didn’t seem to know what “high level discussions” the report is referencing.