Q3 2016 Take-up Figures for the BDUK Roll-out of Superfast Broadband

The Government’s £1.7bn state aid supported Broadband Delivery UK programme has released its latest Q3 2016 take-up data for the roll-out of superfast broadband (24Mbps+) services across the United Kingdom, which shows strong adoption and that will help reinvestment.

The latest figures predominantly reflect take-up (i.e. % subscribed of premises passed by new BDUK supported networks) of superfast connectivity in areas that have been upgraded through the now completed Phase One of the scheme with BT (90% UK coverage by spring 2016), which has predominantly been installing its ‘up to’ 40-80Mbps capable FTTC and a tiny bit of 330Mbps FTTP technology.

On top of that we also have early data for parts of the Phase Two (95% UK coverage by 2017/18) “Superfast Extension Programme“, which is now starting to ramp-up. It’s worth pointing out that Phase Two isn’t completely dominated by BT (Openreach) and a number of alternative network providers (Gigaclear, Call Flow etc.) are helping out in various areas (e.g. Berkshire and Gloucestershire).

Understanding take-up remains crucial because it links into the clawback (gainshare) mechanism of BDUK’s local authority contracts, which requires suppliers (e.g. BT) to return part of the public investment when adoption of the new service passes beyond the 20% mark. The funding can then be reinvested to further improve coverage and service speeds via future contracts.

At the last count the clawback mechanism was on course to return over £292 million (see today’s related news) and it’s been predicted that the related reinvestment from this could help to take the coverage of superfast broadband networks from 95% by 2017/18 to 97% of the UK by the end of 2020.

Otherwise the following list breaks the take-up data down by each BDUK local authority / project area, although for the proper context these percentages should ideally be considered alongside the most recent premises passed (network coverage) data for each local authority. So far BDUK has helped to expand “fibre” (FTTC/P) services to 4.5 million UK premises and some 4.2m of those are 24Mbps+ capable (here).

NOTE: Some of the counties have divided their roll-outs into separate projects / contracts. For example, Phase One in Shropshire doesn’t include the ‘Telford and Wrekin’ area because that is part of a separate Phase Two contract in the same county.

BDUK Phase One Take-up (Average %)

BDUK Phase Two Take-up (Average %)

NOTE: The Phase 2 take-up for Northern Ireland is 11.7%, although we don’t have any related data for the other Devolved Administrations and so haven’t given them a table.

IMPORTANT: Take-up is a dynamically scaled measurement, which means that at certain stages of the scheme it may go up or even down depending upon the pace of deployment (i.e. premises passed in any given time-scale), although over time the take-up should only rise.

Explained another way, early phases of the roll-out are easier and faster to deploy, so you can expect to see a bit of a yo-yo movement with the take-up % sometimes falling if lots of new areas are suddenly covered. Some contracts are also younger than others and will thus take time to catch-up. However BDUK’s roll-out pace is also starting to slow as they reach tricky rural areas (Phase 2), which will give take-up a chance to climb in Phase 1.

A number of other factors can also impact take-up, such as the higher prices for related “fibre” services, as well as customers being locked into long contracts with their existing ISP (they can’t upgrade immediately) and a lack of general availability awareness (locals don’t know it exists) or interest in the new connectivity (if you have a decent ADSL2+ speed then you might feel less inclined to upgrade).

In other cases the new service may run out of capacity (i.e. demand is higher than expected), which means that people who want to upgrade are prevented from doing so until Openreach resolves the problem. However the scale of this issue is very small.