Somerset UK Council Predict 11K Premises to Miss Superfast Broadband

The Somerset County Council in England has published an update on their joint £171 million Connecting Devon and Somerset (CDS) project, which reveals that around 11,300 premises in the county will remain unserved by “superfast broadband” (30Mbps+) ISP networks when the project completes in 2020.

The project is currently working with Openreach (BT), Gigaclear and wireless ISP Airband in order to extend the reach of superfast broadband across the two rural counties and overall CDS expects to cover 96% of premises by 2020 (currently 86%). A mix of FTTC, FTTP “full fibre” and Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) based broadband technologies are being used (see here and here).

Yesterday we got an update on CDS from Somerset council’s Scrutiny for Polices and Place Committee. We’re a little bit short on time this afternoon and so we’ll skip the usual analysis and just post some of the highlights, although you can click the link in order to get more details.

Highlights from the Somerset Scrutiny Report

* Gigaclear’s phase 2 rollout has been slowed by the fallout from Carillion’s (contractor) collapse but they still expect to complete on time. Telent has taken over from the Carilliion telent partnership and Gigaclear has also introduced additional resource (e.g. McNicholas part of the Kier group) as well as other contractors.

* Lot 4’s (which broadly covers Northern Devon between Exmoor and Dartmoor) phase 2 rollout was awarded to Airband, which will provide a wireless solution in that area. A share of the ERDF funding is being introduced into the Lot 4 contract and that has apparently “also taken longer and been more complex than was anticipated.”

* To meet the government target of ensuring that all businesses and residents have access to at least 2Mbps, CDS created a broadband Voucher Scheme. This was open to anyone with a current broadband speed of less than 2Mbps who would not be included in the main CDS or commercial programmes. Over 6,200 vouchers were issued and over 1,900 installations have taken place. The application process is currently paused whilst the scheme is reviewed but this is expected to be re-opened during summer 2018.

* CDS is also planning to launch schemes to support community broadband solutions in the summer.

* In addition to the ERDF funding which has been secured, CDS has also submitted an application for funding for £5M from the Rural Development Agency to extend coverage in rural areas. The outcome of this bid is still pending.

* It is currently anticipated that there will be circa 11,300 premises remaining in Somerset which will not yet have a broadband service of 30Mbps. Of these approximately 1,500 premises will be business / dual use (business and residential). Of these approx. 1,000 premises will have speeds of less than 15Mbps.

* The continuing challenge is to seek ways to extend coverage to all. Although CDS continues to apply for further grants, “for the most remote and difficult to reach areas it may be some time before viable superfast solutions can be found for all.”

* Gigaclear is said to have several retail ISPs connecting to its existing fibre network selling services to customers. Gigaclear has informed CDS that larger retail ISPs are not yet selling over the Gigaclear network because Gigaclear does not yet serve enough properties for the larger providers to justify the internal resources for connection to the Gigaclear network. Gigaclear has been advised that “major ISPs require a minimum of 200,000 premises before they will consider connecting” to the Gigaclear network. Gigaclear plans to reach this figure at some point in the next 2 years.

Interesting, that’s the first time we’ve heard about the 200,000 premises figure for major retail ISPs before they would even consider connecting to an altnet ISPs network. Good news for Hyperoptic too, if they went open access, since they’ve already gone well beyond 400,000.