Boris Johnson Pledges Full Fibre for All UK by 2025 – Doesn’t Say How UPDATE

In-between skipping TV leadership debates the current front-runner to be the United Kingdom’s next Prime Minister, Boris Johnson MP, has made the rather striking pledge toward “delivering full fibre [broadband] to every home in the land” by 2025. Naturally he fails to say how this would be funded or even possible.

The headline claim, which was made as part of his column in the Telegraph newspaper (paywall), sees the leadership candidate belittling his own Government’s “laughably unambitious … deadline” (technically it’s an aspiration since they haven’t yet set out the full detail of precisely how we’ll actually achieve nationwide coverage) and replacing it with a significantly more aspirational one.

Just to recap. The current Government has committed to deliver ultrafast Gigabit capable “full fibre” (FTTP) broadband ISP connections to 10 million UK premises by 2022, then 15 million premises by 2025 and there’s also an aspiration for “nationwide” coverage by 2033 (here).

At present the main focus has appeared to be on laying the groundwork for this with targeted investment, as well as the softening of regulation and a business rates holiday etc. (i.e. encouraging the market to do as much of the work as possible first via a value for money approach), albeit without putting the billions of pounds on the table that would be necessary to tackle the hardest to reach areas. The Future Telecoms Infrastructure Review provides a good foundation for all of this.

Boris Johnson MP said:

“[It’s] a disgrace that this country should suffer from a deep digital divide, so that many rural areas and towns are simply left behind.

The government has just set a new target for the 100% roll-out of full fibre broadband – by 2033. As a deadline, that is laughably unambitious. If we want to unite our country and our society, we should commit now to delivering full fibre to every home in the land not in the mid 2030s – but in five years at the outside.

Let’s say goodbye to the UK’s manana approach to broadband and unleash full fibre for all by 2025.”

Top marks for the bold aspiration but what’s less clear is how this would even be possible. We have yet to see any country – except maybe for the odd city-state with very different considerations to the UK – where rolling out a Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network to cover every single premises wasn’t an incredibly slow and laborious project.

Even when you have all of the funding in the world, there’s no escaping the realities of such complex civil engineering, which does tend to take a couple of decades in a big country like ours. Sadly Boris doesn’t say how much his plan would cost, not to mention where the masses of skilled short-term labour / equipment would come from (there’s already a shortage on this front and if you could find all those people then that’s a lot of workers suddenly losing their jobs after 2025) or how he might tackle other complex problems, such as with ensuring fair competition between ISPs and managing overbuild etc.

The political process required to develop and consult upon such a plan would almost certainly take a couple of years to run its course, which is without even considering the procurement / tender process before building could begin (it took the original Broadband Delivery UK programme from 2010 to 2013 to get all this foundation fully implemented). Sadly by then you’re only left with just 3-4 short years to achieve a task that looks, frankly, almost impossible in the current climate.

Consider for a moment that it may take 5G mobile technology around the same length of time to achieve 90-95% geographic coverage, which is a wireless communications network that doesn’t even need to build fibre down every street and already has a lot of the necessary infrastructure (masts) in place, and you start to appreciate the problem with Boris’s proposed time-scale.

Perhaps a Disney princess could flick her wand and solve all of these obstacles (realities) but we don’t live in fairy tales. As ever, such things are easier said than done. Likewise any new pledge from a political party or politician seeking election, particularly one concerning broadband connectivity and massive public spending, should always be taken with a pinch of salt until we have some solid detail.

Once again. None of this is to disagree with the actual goal of achieving nationwide coverage of a full fibre network, which ISPreview fully supports. But at least the 2033 aspiration has some chance of being achieved, even if we doubt whether the job will be done by the time that date is hit.

UPDATE 10:59am

National telecoms operator Openreach, which would in such a scenario be likely to shoulder much of the burden for a national FTTP deployment, has furnished us with the following comment.

An Openreach Spokesperson told ISPreview.co.uk:

“It’s hugely ambitious, but so are we.

We agree that full fibre can be the platform for the UK’s future prosperity and no company is investing more, building faster or aiming higher than Openreach. We aim to reach four million homes and businesses by March 2021 and up to 15 million by mid 2020s if the conditions are right.

We’re already in decent shape when it comes to ‘superfast’ broadband, which is more widely available here than in almost any other comparable nation on earth – and has led the UK to have the leading digital economy in the G20.

But building full fibre technology to the whole of the UK isn’t quick or easy. It requires £30 billion and a physical build to more than 30m front doors, from suburban terraces to remote crofts.

We’re determined to lead the way and there’s a lot that Government could be doing now to help us go further and faster.”

UPDATE 12:21pm

The UK Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) has added its comment.

Andrew Glover, ISPA Chair, said:

“Boris Johnson’s ambitious commitment to achieve full fibre coverage by 2025 is welcome, but needs to be matched with ambitious regulatory change, including reform of the Fibre Tax. Broadband is a largely privately financed infrastructure and together with outdated planning laws, fibre business rates are holding our members back from accelerating their roll-out plans.”

UPDATE 2:04pm

Full fibre developer VX Fibre has added their opinion.

Richard Watts, Business Development Director of VX Fiber, said:

“Although this is an admirable pledge by Boris Johnson, it is one that shouldn’t be taken lightly and without an acknowledgement or a true understanding of the UK’s current connectivity situation. Indeed, connecting Britain – ensuring that every citizen has access to high-speed internet – should be a key priority for the UK government. Especially considering the economic (regeneration, innovation and business growth) and social-economic benefits (access to healthcare, education and better delivery of public services) internet access brings. Compared to the rest of Europe, we currently sit embarrassingly close to the bottom of the connectivity list when it comes to Full Fibre.

However, the reality is that the UK does not have the correct infrastructure in place for this to happen. The UK government should look to Sweden as an example from which to take the lead, as its high-speed internet connectivity is deployed through full fibre networks all the way to the end user. They have a government pledge for 100% gigabit speed full fibre for the entire nation by 2025 but they have been at it for 15 years and currently over 90% deployment already! Faster internet across urban and rural Britain will only be made possible once the UK has installed its own full fibre network – replacing the current copper infrastructure which has served its purpose but is not fit to deliver the UK’s digital future. And with this, that every premise i.e. home, business, public building, etc, as well as 5G masts, has fibre served directly to it.

UK government funds and initiatives such as the Digital Infrastructure Investment (DIIF) fund investing in fibre rollout, and the Local Full Fibre Networks (LFFN) Challenge fund, are going some way to help with this. But there are crucial considerations that need to be addressed if we are to oil the wheels of the UK’s 5G and broadband machine. Deploying the infrastructure (full fibre network) takes time – it requires updated planning policies, regulation and collaboration between local authorities, councils and the companies deploying the fibre.

The UK is already on a high trajectory of growth in this area, particularly as alternative networks such as VXfiber, which take inspiration from the successful fibre models in Scandinavia and beyond, are increasing their investment in and deployment of full fibre. They are working directly with local authorities enabling them to kick start their own gigabit fibre initiatives. This, along with an open access environment and the ability to collaborate fibre at the ground level and service providers on the same platform will certainly allow the UK government to deliver its internet connectivity ambitions a lot faster.

So, if Boris Johnson or whoever is to be the UK’s next Prime Minister, they really need to do their homework and set realistic plans and timelines for the rollout – and ensure that this support and money is actually given. The industry is doing what it can, but we need to make sure we have enough time to deploy this properly, and that it is done correctly.”