Devon and Somerset UK to Offer Community Broadband Funding

The troubled Connecting Devon and Somerset (CDS) project has announced that it is looking for ISPs to help support the launch of a new funding scheme, which is due to launch later in 2019 and will help rural communities to get a faster broadband network built. Meanwhile Gigaclear has been given a deadline to get their FTTP plan sorted.

The Community Challenge Fund has already been piloted in Harford and Lower Combe in Devon with Openreach and Airband, while a third pilot with Openreach is currently being built in Yatton (North Somerset) and should complete sometime this summer.

Overall CDS provided £70,000 of public funding to help these areas rollout a Gigabit capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network and some 138 premises now have access. We assume other funding was also harnessed as £70k alone seems rather cheap for that number of premises.

The CDS team intend to officially launch the new scheme later this year and this should help them to tackle those remaining communities in the final 5% of premises that may not benefit from their existing contracts with Openreach, Airband and Gigaclear.

Councillor Rufus Gilbert, Devon County Council, said:

“The pilots have proved really effective at enabling local people in communities with different needs to co-produce a great broadband solution that works best for them with CDS support.

Each community has had different characteristics and challenges, ranging from deeply rural areas and protected landscapes to urban fringes. We want to apply the good practice learned from these pilots to help other communities co-produce their own solutions. This will add a new dimension to complement our existing broadband programme and support the Government’s full fibre policy.”

Shaun Dale, Senior Project Manager for BT, said:

“It’s been a journey but we’ve extended fibre into a place where the main programme wasn’t going to go and Harford is probably one of the more remote areas on the edge of Dartmoor. Bringing fibre here has helped the immediate community go from zero broadband to Gigabit speeds if that’s what they wish. It’s a process that works really well and it delivers broadband to places that otherwise would be waiting a long time to get very, very good speeds.”

The public take up of broadband services as a result of CDS related deployments is nearly 55%, in line with the UK average, and the £6m of gainshare from this (i.e. public investment returned by BT for reinvestment to further boost coverage) is already set to help Openreach (BT) boost “superfast broadband” to a further 2,000 premises in the hardest to reach areas (further reinvestment sums are expected up until 2024).

Meanwhile we also got an update on Airband’s wireless and fibre network rollout in the region, which has now expanded its coverage to reach 7,000 rural premises. By June 2020 it’s expected that around 16,000 properties across mid, north and west Devon will be able to get superfast broadband as part of the CDS programme. Airband is also providing a network to serve around a further 5,000 hard to reach properties in the Dartmoor and Exmoor National Parks.

Finally, CDS issued a much needed update on the controversial Gigaclear contracts (see here and here for details if you need a recap), which in some CDS areas is now running 2 years behind schedule. The ISP is currently still conducting the deployment at their own risk (no public funding) and in the meantime CDS have continued to keep Gigaclear “on notice of default” until they receive a satisfactory plan.

Interestingly the latest update starts by copy and pasting some now all too familiar statements but this time it ends by setting a clear deadline. “Residents and businesses have been let down as a result of these delays and CDS has made it clear to Gigaclear that this uncertainty cannot continue indefinitely. CDS has allowed the company additional time to evaluate and cost alternative methods of network construction. The company is on notice of default pending receipt of a revised plan by the end of July that is acceptable both to CDS and the Government. CDS will not shrink from taking further tough action if that is deemed necessary.”

The Government has already given provisional approval for CDS to extend £18.7m of related public funding for Gigaclear until March 2023, although this will only become official once HM Treasury has finalised an agreement with DCMS as part of the Spending Review process. However it’s conceivable that the review could still be delayed by Brexit and the current leadership contest for PM. CDS may also choose to scrap Gigaclear’s contract but we still view that as being unlikely.