UPDATE Aylesbury Vale Opposition Leader Criticises Broadband ISP Sale to Gigaclear

The Group Leader of the Liberal Democrats, Anders Christensen, has accused the Aylesbury Vale District Council in Buckinghamshire of trying “falsely portray” the recent sale of the rural FTTH based Aylesbury Vale Broadband network (assets) to UK ISP Gigaclear as a success story.

Officially AVB was supported by around £700,000 in the form of a publicly funded commercial loan from AVDC (extracted from a fund of £1.536m), which itself acted as a 95% shareholder (most of AVBs directors work for the council). Until the sale (here), AVB claimed that it had been steadily building the network out to serve around 2,000 premises in several villages.

Naturally most of the people behind AVB have nothing but good things to say about the effort, which is despite a stream of criticism from opposition councillors, a number of overbuilding or competition challenges (examples here and here), concerns over financial stability, technical problems with the network (took awhile to resolve) and issues with the slow pace of deployment.

In fairness building a FTTH network into rural areas is no mean feat and AVB clearly had noble intentions towards reaching rural parts of the vale. Sadly the level of secrecy around the project’s funding, sale and actual progress hasn’t always made it easy to write about. Each side of the council seems to accuse the other of misleading the public in some way and in both cases the road block of confidentiality makes it hard to verify fact from fiction.

Councillor and AVB Director, Janet Blake, recently said that she was “extremely proud of the success Aylesbury Vale Broadband (AVB) has achieved in delivering high-speed broadband to rural villages in the Vale that otherwise had no realistic likelihood of being connected by other providers” (here). Meanwhile the opposition take a different view.

Anders Christensen, LibDem Councillor, told ISPreview.co.uk:

“I am disturbed by the press releases put out by the Council in relation to the sale of AVB. Cllr Janet Blake continues to falsely portray AVB as a success when information released to a handful of councillors (we have been gagged so we can not publicly share it) clearly demonstrate the false nature of Janet Blake’s comments.

She insists on saying AVB connected 7 villages but this includes Oving and Drayton Parslow which, while having fibre laid to the edge of the village, did not connect a single subscriber.

The council also trot out the line that AVB serve around 2,000 premises in several villages. As noted I can’t divulge the actual number of subscribers but suffice to say it’s a fraction of the 2000. Only 1/3 of the people who paid deposits to get the service from AVB were ever connected.

It’s great news that broadband services to the effected villages will finally be run by a professional company and I am hopeful that they will finally receive the service that AVDC falsely promised them two years ago. While I have not seen the details of the sale yet I can say that even the most optimistic view before Christmas is that the council would still loose a substantial amount of money as the selling price would be less than the money ploughed into to AVB. “

It’s worth pointing out that the reference to 2,000 premises is a reflection of coverage and appears to have been wrongfully conflated with take-up above, which requires a different measure of success. Even in rural areas take-up often requires time to grow and we know a fair few FTTP/H providers that initially aim for around 20-30% take-up. The original take-up assumptions for the BT / BDUK programme were even lower but today stand at around 39% of total homes passed.

Sadly the secrecy means we can’t easily verify how well AVB has done. Similarly Anders has previously claimed that AVB “[ran] out of money” and gobbled £1.3m of investment (well above the £700k touted in previous public documents), although once again we cannot verify who is telling the truth because of the frustrating confidentiality and counter claims by bitter political opponents.

A review of the AVB scheme, which will be conducted by an external body and is expected to go through AVDC’s Audit Committee, is due to begin soon but there are already doubts about how much solid information about AVB’s financial situation, actual deployment or the Gigaclear sale will end up being released to the public. A recent council meeting (skip to item 8 here) helps to illustrate the challenge of confidentiality vs accountability.

UPDATE 9th Jan 2018

We’ve received the following comment from AVDC.

A Spokesperson for AVDC told ISPreview.co.uk:

“When AVB was launched in 2015 its aim was to bring high speed broadband to rural parts of Aylesbury Vale that couldn’t receive it. At the time, Connected Counties was not delivering in Aylesbury Vale and there were no other incumbent suppliers. Since launch, AVB has provided FTTH connections to customers in 7 villages (Granboroough, Hoggeston, Soulbury, Swanbourne, North Marston, Stewkley, Dunton), with fibre laid in two more (Oving and Drayton Parslow) that are still to be connected. The network coverage is circa 2000 properties but, as you correctly identify, that is not the take-up figure.

Arguably, as a result of AVB’s success other commercial companies have entered into the local market and one of them, Gigaclear, expressed interest and subsequently purchased the assets of the business. Gigaclear’s commitment to growing the network in Aylesbury Vale was a deciding factor in the decision to sell and the sale will enable the network to grow faster than it otherwise could, meaning more residents will have access to high speed broadband. Therefore, AVB has achieved its primary objective and can confidently be described as a success.

Unfortunately, due to commercial confidentiality we are not able to respond to comments about the subscriber base or commercial arrangements at this time. However, details of offer were shared with Cllr Christensen at a Leaders Meeting in November 2017 and the sale was supported unanimously by all parties at a General Purposes committee meeting of the Council on 30 November.

Finally, it is good business practice to undertake a review of businesses and to take the learnings forward to future ventures. In this instance, the Council approved a motion to appoint external auditors to conduct a review of the business and report their findings to the Audit Committee. This is very different to a ‘full independent inquiry’ referred to by Cllr Christensen in some of his media statements.”