Progress Toward 100% Superfast Broadband Cover in Suffolk UK

The state aid supported Better Broadband for Suffolk project in England is expected to start signing some new contracts with ISPs in the latter part of June – July 2018, which could help them to achieve their ambition of 100% “superfast broadband” (24Mbps+) coverage by the end of 2020.

At present around 93% of Suffolk is already covered by fixed superfast broadband networks and a big chunk of that is due to the aforementioned project, which has been working with the government’s Broadband Delivery UK programme and Openreach (BT) to extend the availability of their FTTC (plus some FTTP) based broadband networks (123,684 premises have already befitted from this).

The current deployment deal (Suffolk’s third contract) should extend superfast connectivity to “over” 98% of local premises by around mid-2020, although the county council has long held an ambition to reach 100% by the very end of 2020. Unfortunately that final 2% also happens to represent some of the “hardest to reach” areas, many of which exist on the East Suffolk coast.

Last year the local authority moved to tackle this challenge by establishing the Suffolk Coastal Enabling Broadband Programme Board and this week the East Suffolk council released a small but useful update (here) on its progress, which states that new tenders could be agreed this summer.

Council Statement

A Viability Event was held on 26th February 2018 at East Suffolk House to present the Council’s plans to potential suppliers of broadband services and generate discussion on the feasibility of potential delivery options. Six interested providers attended and received a clear understanding of what the Council was trying to achieve and likely funding available. The event was successful with an agreed decision to proceed on the basis of a “Framework Agreement approach”.

The Framework Agreement approach would allow interested companies to qualify for a framework which would enable them to express interest in and tender for the items of work in the build phase. The build phase will involve identifying a number of current nobuild areas and asking for proposals for the provision of a broadband service to those premises. The first phase build will be followed by another phase leading to full coverage or to the extent that the limited resources will allow.

Likely timescale based on compliance with standard procurement processes should enable completion of Framework qualifying process within May and tenders for the first of the build areas awarded between the latter part of June – July 2018. Work is currently being undertaken to determine the detail and document the service specification and selection criteria to be used for the procurement process.

As the Framework will be valid for up to four years, then efforts will be made wherever possible to ensure sufficient flexibility so that it could be used to address similar broadband availability issues across wider East Suffolk area should additional funding be available.

The Enabling Broadband Programme has a budget of £250k, £200k of which has been agreed as part of the approved 2017/2018 MTFS (Medium Term Financial Strategy) and a further £50k from the return of a contribution made by Suffolk Coastal District Council (via SCLSP) to the Suffolk Better Broadband Programme thereby giving a total fund of £250k.

On the other hand £250,000, even when matched with private investment, won’t take them very far because it’s always disproportionately more expensive to tackle the most remote and sparse rural communities. So far Suffolk’s existing project has already contracted around £54 million of public funding (£26.94m from BDUK and £26.67m from local bodies/councils) and that’s before we factor BT’s private investment.

On the other hand there’s still a question mark over how much reinvestment of public funding might in future be returned by BT due to strong take-up of the new service (gainshare / clawback under the existing contract), which could be used to further improve local broadband coverage. Hopefully more details will surface in a few months.