£28m Deal – Nearly 15500 Premises in Warwickshire to Get FTTP Ultrafast Broadband

The CSW Broadband project, which aims to make “superfast broadband” (24Mbps+) available to 98% of premises in Warwickshire, Solihull and Coventry (England) by the end of 2019, has agreed a £28m Phase 3 contract with Openreach (BT) to roll-out 1Gbps capable FTTP to nearly 15,500 premises.

The Contract 3 (Part 1) deal is being funded by £4.8m from the local authorities in Coventry, Solihull and Warwickshire, £7.2m from the Government’s Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) programme, £2m from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), £13m from BT and £1m from Coventry & Warwickshire Local Enterprise Partnership (CWLEP).

It’s good to see that BT are making a bigger contribution this time around. The original Contract 1 was worth £15.47m (£5.67 million from BT and the rest from public sources), while the Contract 2 Part 1 extension came to £10.73m (£2.61m from BT) and Contract 2 Part 2 was supported by £2m in public funding clawback (reinvestment) from the first contract.

So far most of the earlier contracts have been dominated by the roll-out of Openreach’s slower ‘up to’ 80Mbps Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) technology, although this has been significantly scaled back for Contract 3. Instead the operator envisages that “almost” 90% of the 15,500 premises can expect to be reached via their latest 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) technology.

Peter Butlin, Deputy Leader of Warwickshire County Council, said:

“Today’s announcement is great news. When the CSW Broadband project started, just over 73 per cent of premises in Warwickshire could achieve speeds of 24Mbps or above. Today we’re looking forward to more than 98 per cent being able to achieve what would at one time have been unthinkable speeds of over 30Mbps. The CSW Broadband team is actively seeking funding to take the fibre network still further.”

Unfortunately we won’t learn which will be the first areas to benefit from Part 1 of Contract 3 until early next month, when they will be revealed via the project’s website.

Steve Haines, MD of NGA Broadband for Openreach, said:

“This major investment is a vital new chapter in the story which began nearly three and a half years ago, when the partnership began connecting its first premises in Snitterfield. CSW Broadband is already a huge success and now we’re set to go even further as it reaches into some of the region’s most remote areas.

The roll-out of high-speed broadband across Warwickshire, Coventry and Solihull has transformed the way people get online which is why we’re committed to making this exciting technology as widely available as possible.”

So far around 60,000 properties (c.230,000 if you include Openreach’s existing commercial “superfast” network or c.245,000 for their raw “fibre based” footprint) have benefited from the roll-out and the estimated coverage level for “superfast broadband” currently sits at around 93-94%, which means that the existing contracts are running to schedule (i.e. expected to hit 94% by the end of 2017).

Engineers from Openreach will begin work on this third phase during Spring 2018 and the roll-out is then expected to reach the first premises in around 12 months’ time, with all the upgrades due to be completed by the end of 2019.

It’s interesting to note that we’re seeing a growing trend from Openreach to adopt FTTP for the final contract phases. In many cases this means that related rural areas will benefit from faster broadband speeds than earlier phases, which tended to focus on more populated areas.