New Guide for UK Street Works and FTTP Fibre Optic Delivery

One subtle development that appears to have been overlooked this week is the Government’s move to publish a new guide for civil engineering (street works), which sets the best practice when constructing the next generation of Gigabit capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) style broadband ISP networks.

The document itself stems from the Government’s Barrier Busting Taskforce within the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS). It has been created in partnership with companies like Openreach (BT), Virgin Media, the John Henry Group, Ofcom, DfT, Gigaclear, Telent, BDUK, McNicholas Kier and many others.

Essentially it provides “examples of good practice” and includes a toolkit offering advice for local authorities and utilities wishing to collaborate in a cooperative working relationship. The focus is on utilities specialising in fibre deployment, although DCMS note that “many of its recommendations are equally valid for street works in general.”

Admittedly all this is aimed at ISPs and local authorities, although it also contains some useful bits of information and examples from existing roll-outs. For example, Fastershire’s (i.e. broadband roll-out in Gloucestershire and Herefordshire) acceptance of the use of narrow-trenching by Gigaclear as the main technique for the FTTH build resulted in at 200% deployment productivity increase compared to conventional delivery.

Similarly it claims that Cityfibre’s 1Gbps FTTH deployment to 54,000 premises in York with TalkTalk (currently covering 22% of the city) should reach 75% of the city by the end of 2019, which we think is the first time that anybody has actually put a % coverage timescale on their roll-out. “The Council is already seeing new companies and investment arriving as a direct result,” added the document.

The document also advocates a Dig Once approach, which essentially means that when a road is being excavated for whatever reason, ducting for fibre optic cables is also installed.

Fibre Delivery Document (Extract)

Different interpretation of legislation and statutory guidance by local authorities and the quality of the street works delivery can have a significant impact on trust between operators and LAs and hence, the ability to deploy fibre infrastructure efficiently. Collaboration cannot be built without trust. Local authorities must be confident that an operator will not harm their highway assets. Operators need to feel confident that any fees or charges issued by an HA are justified – particularly when they are not levelled by other authorities.

This toolkit aims to improve consistency and trust, promote collaboration and complement current legislation . It is tailored toward operational teams within LAs and operators and in particular those responsible for planning and executing builds. Recommendations have been drawn from insights, experiences and recommendations from local authority traffic and permitting managers, street works teams from operators and contractors, the Joint Authorities Group (JAG) UK, HAUC UK, Streetworks UK, Broadband Delivery UK, the Department for Transport, and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. The recommendations aim to help improve the ability of local authorities and industry to plan, deploy and deliver world class digital infrastructure at pace.

N.B. Where a local authority grants certain relaxations, waivers, etc to operators as suggested in this toolkit, these same benefits must be made available to all other utilities. Legislation does not allow local authorities to make such concessions selectively.

The full document can be downloaded here.