Northumberland Commit £6.4m for 3200 Premises to Get Superfast Broadband
The Northumberland County Council in England has confirmed that a third extension contract worth £6.4 million has been signed with Openreach (BT), which will enable an additional 3,200 homes and businesses to access their FTTC/P based “superfast broadband” (24Mbps+) network.
At present the county’s iNorthumberland project has already enabled 90% of local premises to access a “superfast broadband” network (95%+ if you include the sub-24Mbps “fibre” footprint) and a second £4.1m Phase 2 extension contract is currently under-way, which will push the existing network reach out to another 3,700 premises (details).
By comparison the new deal reflects some £1 million of extra public investment from the council, plus £1 million from the Broadband Delivery UK programme and finally BT has also returned £4.4 million from the first contract due to deployment savings and clawback / gainshare (i.e. public money returned as a result of high customer take-up in upgraded areas, which currently sits at an impressive 40%).
Most of the current deployment has used slower ‘up to’ 80Mbps capable FTTC technology, although about 2,300 premises were also done with ultrafast FTTP. Overall the project currently hopes to bring superfast broadband to 95% of the county by the end of 2017, although today’s news of another 3,200 premises should push beyond that target.
Simon Roberson, BT’s North East Partnership Director, said (Northumberland Gazette):
“More than 152,000 homes and businesses in Northumberland can now access fibre broadband thanks to iNorthumberland and BT’s own commercial roll-out.
The second phase of the iNorthumberland programme continues at pace and now that an extension has been agreed, it makes us more determined than ever to improve broadband speeds as widely as possible across the county.
BT’s ambition is to never say no to any community that wants superfast broadband. We have launched a Community Fibre Partnerships programme where we work with a local group not covered by an existing fibre upgrade plan – this could be the residents of a rural village or a block of flats in a town centre or even a group of business owners in an industrial park – to find a solution to bring fibre to their area.”
Apparently some of the areas that can expect to benefit from improved coverage of FTTC/P broadband technology under the new contract extension include Alwinton, Guyzance, Boulmer, Chillingham, Doxford, Woodhorn, Tritlington, Weldon Bridge, Kirkley, Wark, Mindrum, Akeld, Cheswick and Twizell.
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 Twitter, Google+, Facebook and Linkedin.
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So that’s now £2,000 per premises, which is maybe getting towards the figure we might expect for rural premises using FTTP and commercial costs. However, I suspect that costs per premises will climb even higher as smaller and smaller communities get dealt with.
If it’s going to be expensive anywhere, this is the kind of location that will see it at its highest.
I wonder what happened to the £1,700 limit? Dispensations? Or does re-investment of the clawback not quite count?
Doing the math on the Oxfordshire news item shows even more expenditure per property >£3k. Are the post-2016 EEU/BDUK state aid conditions now applicable?
“The aid intensity will depend on the outcome of the open tender processes and thus
will vary from project to project. While the majority of projects will require an aid
intensity of less than 100%, the UK expects that there will be cases that will require
100% aid funding, given the challenges posed by legacy network deployment
decisions, extreme topography, network re-configuration and very low population
densities. The UK proposes to apply a common eligibility requirement to all projects.”
I obviously used the wrong numbers when I looked at the Oxfordshire article, but you’re right. Numbers are getting bigger.
The new rules apply to new contracts … but a lot of old contracts allowed for extensions, particularly reinvestment of clawback. Old rules ought to apply then.
Found this on the Chesire phase 3, using clawback, they modify the existing contract. They mention complying with EU state aid, which would have to be the current clearance. I would not expect it to be legal to modify a contract and retain the expired clearance.
http://moderngov.cheshireeast.gov.uk/ecminutes/mgConvert2PDF.aspx?