The Connecting Devon and Somerset project in England has today announced the completion of their original £94 million Phase One roll-out contract with Openreach (BT), which has made “superfast broadband” (24Mbps+) services available to 278,000 premises.
The contract was originally due to complete by the end of 2016, although much of the remaining work in Q1 2017 has involved the deployment of 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premise (FTTP) infrastructure and this is a slower process; as well as being one that involved a fair few headaches due to the need for numerous wayleave agreements and highways notifications. Lest we forget that Devon and Somerset are both highly challenging rural counties.
Overall the Phase One CDS contract has managed to push “high-speed fibre broadband” (FTTC/P) services out to an additional 320,000 local homes and businesses (take-up in related areas has also reached 33.5%), which is a higher figure than the 278,000 mentioned above because this also includes slower sub-24Mbps areas.
Most of this deployment has involved Openreach’s slower ‘up to’ 80Mbps Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) technology and a total of 1,460 new “fibre” Street Cabinets have been installed by Openreach, as well as a quarter of a million miles of optical fibre.
Councillor Andrew Leadbetter, Economy and Growth for Devon County Council, said:
“Connecting Devon and Somerset and its partners have been a driving force in solving the challenge of bringing next generation access to businesses and communities in the region.
Completion of our phase 1 programme means that thousands of homes and businesses now enjoy the benefits of having much faster internet speeds, which supports modern day living and working practices as well as being critical to the local economy. We recognise there is still a long way to go to ensure everyone can enjoy the same speeds and benefits across the region.”
The original contract was supported by around £32 million of State Aid from the government’s Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) programme, plus another £10 million from the local councils and the final £41 million reflects match-funding from BT (private investment). Several million also came from the Bath and North East Somerset Council (public sector total of around £53 million).
Despite the progress, Thinkbroadband’s database estimates that both counties are still a long way off achieving the Government’s original 90% goal for “superfast broadband” coverage. The current data estimates just 81% coverage of 24Mbps+ speeds in Devon and 84% in Somerset (note: the official figures tend to be +1-2% more optimistic, but we prefer TBB’s more cautious data).
However Phase One still has a little bit further to go, which over the “next few weeks” will take it a beyond the original expectations.
Bill Murphy, BT’s MD of Next Generation Access, said:
“Connecting Devon and Somerset has been an outstanding success, overcoming considerable engineering and geographic challenges, including the worst flooding in Somerset in living memory, to deliver a major boost to households and businesses across the two counties.
The target of making fibre broadband available to 320,000 premises has already been easily exceeded by more than 12,000, whilst the target of making superfast speeds of 24Mbps and above available to 278,000 premises has also been achieved and, indeed, we expect to comfortably exceed it in the coming weeks.
The successful roll-out of this exciting technology is great news for Devon and Somerset communities because whatever you do online you can do it better with fibre broadband. When BT’s commercial programme is also included, it means that we have been involved in making fibre broadband available to more than 868,000 premises across the two counties.”
At one point last year BT had been in the running to pick-up the CDS Phase Two contract, although that plan collapsed after Openreach and the local authorities were unable to agree a mutually acceptable level of coverage and time-scale. At the time CDS said that BT couldn’t commit what was needed or offer “any reassurances that the 95% [coverage] target could be reached” (here).
Since then CDS has signed a separate £4.6m deal with fixed wireless ISP Airband to cover 5,800 premises in the Dartmoor and Exmoor National Parks (here). On top of that they’ve recently agreed to a major new contract with Gigaclear that will bring 1Gbps capable FTTP broadband to an additional 35,225 of the hardest to reach premises in the region by 2019 (here).
In other words the 90% coverage goal for “superfast broadband” still looks likely to be achieved over the next few years, although it’s clear that closing the final 10% gap after that will be a huge challenge. Sadly that’ll be a tough pill to swallow if you happen to live in the final 10%, although hopefully the proposed 10Mbps USO will provide some help but perhaps not until 2020.
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