BT Deal Extend Superfast Broadband to 95% of North Yorkshire UK UPDATE

The Superfast North Yorkshire project in England has awarded its £20.5 million Phase 3 contract to Openreach (BT), which will see their FTTP and FTTC based “superfast broadband” (24Mbps+) network being extended to reach an additional 14,239 homes and businesses (95% of premises).

At present the programme, which is supported by the Government’s Broadband Delivery UK scheme, is already estimated to have extended – via the original Phase 1 and 2 contracts with BT – superfast broadband coverage to 90% of premises in North Yorkshire (note: we’re not entirely sure whether they’ve used the 24Mbps+ or 30Mbps+ definition for this, although the most recent BDUK contracts are all supposed to target 30Mbps+).

Meanwhile planning for Phase 3, which is funded by £12.18m from the council (a big chunk reflects clawback / gainshare from earlier contracts with BT due to high fibre take-up in the intervention area), £7.32m from BDUK and £1m from the European Regional Development Fund, has been going on since early 2016 (here).

Under the new deal it’s stated that the “majority” of the additional 14,000+ premises should get access to Openreach’s ultrafast 330Mbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) technology (i.e. about 12,500 premises), as opposed to its slower and less reliable hybrid-fibre FTTC (VDSL2) service.

Councillor Don Mackenzie, Executive Member for Broadband, said:

“The outcome of the phase three contract procurement is remarkable and puts the quality of broadband provision to some of our most remote communities on to a new, much higher level.

It is very good news indeed for those residents who have been waiting patiently for SFNY to get to them and their patience is likely to be rewarded with some of the best broadband quality in the country.”

County Council Leader, Carl Les, said:

“Phase three of SFNY’s broadband expansion programme represents a fantastic boost to the economy of the county and will give many more small rural firms the ability to compete and to grow their businesses.

The provision of high quality broadband has been a major priority for the county council to address the fact that commercial providers would never have delivered it without our intervention. It has been a major multi-million pound investment by the county council to reach as near to 100% of our residents as possible.”

Unfortunately no time-scale has been published alongside the Phase 3 announcement today, although a detailed roll-out plan is expected by April 2018 and we recall from SFNY’s earlier consultation that the original plan was to finish Phase 3 by mid-2019 (we wouldn’t be surprised if this has now slipped into 2020).

The announcement notes that the average cost per premise for phases one and two is expected to come in as £204, which is very good value for money (we note that Phases 1+2 have extended superfast connectivity to an extra 145,798 premises). The announcement actually claims that this represents the “best value for money in the development of superfast broadband in the UK,” although we’ve not been able to verify this claim.

On the other had the update also states that the previous Phase 2 deployment finished in December 2017, although back in 2016 we were told by SFNY that Phase 2 was due to complete by July 2017 and deliver superfast coverage of “around” 91% (i.e. they seem to be running a little bit behind schedule).

The new target of 94% will also put them well behind the Government’s national UK goal of 95% for BDUK Phase 2, which has already been more or less achieved but this does vary a fair bit between counties (some are closer to 98%+ coverage and others are still sub-90%).

As usual it’s important to point out that the % figures mentioned above are estimates, although real-world experiences can of course vary due to a variety of different reasons (e.g. slow WiFi, poor home wiring [when using FTTC], local network congestion at peak times, street cabinets being full to capacity / unable to take new orders etc.).

Lest we forget that such service upgrades a not automatic, once available you have to order them from an ISP in order to benefit.

UPDATE 13th Feb 2018

Openreach confirmed they will invest a further £9.2m to deliver the new infrastructure.