Connecting Cumbria UK Adding 2,000 FTTP Premises to Rollout
The state aid supported Connecting Cumbria project, which has so far made “superfast broadband” (24Mbps+) services available to around 93% of premises in the county (125,000 extra homes and businesses), is being extended to add a further 2,000+ premises via Openreach’s Gigabit capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network.
At this point we should point out that Phase 2 of Connecting Cumbria was originally aiming to extend the availability of superfast broadband to 95% of premises across the county by mid-2018, which at 93% today means they’re running a fair bit behind schedule. The extra 2,000 premises might however be enough to inch them toward the original 95% target.
Most of the original build used Openreach’s slower FTTC technology but it’s understood that this latest extension will focus on FTTP, which is in keeping with the UK Government’s “full fibre” strategy. Otherwise the work is expected to take place over the next 12 months or so (guesstimating summer 2020 completion or later) and this will be funded by efficiencies (savings) made during earlier phases of work.
Jonathan Harris, Programme Manager for Connecting Cumbria, said:
“The importance of having faster, more reliable Internet access – wherever you are – cannot be underestimated. It’s vital for our businesses to be able to compete and for our communities to thrive.
In a geography like Cumbria rolling out faster broadband is no mean feat but by using the latest FTTP technology we can reach more premises and begin to fill in gaps in coverage. There is more to do but the roll-out continues and we are determined to make faster broadband available to as many homes and businesses as possible.”
Robert Thorburn, Openreach Partnership Director, said:
“We’ve already done a huge amount of great work across Cumbria both commercially and in partnership with Cumbria County Council, but we don’t intend to stop here.
This latest phase of work will help us make fast and reliable broadband available to more, very rural parts of the county, which will make a huge difference to the lives of people living and working there.
None of this would be possible without our engineering workforce. And It’s great that in the past 15 months around 80 people from Cumbria have decided to come and work for us – the country’s largest team of telecoms experts working to expand, upgrade, maintain and install services over our network.”
Sadly no details were provided about the rollout plan itself.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and Linkedin.
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44 minutes and no comments about a gap-funded project? People must be on holiday 😉
I think B4RN have already done about 2000 houses in cumbria Carl. Funny how a tiny company can do the hard bits that an incumbent can’t innit?
Not really. The differences between the two making them incomparable are very well covered elsewhere.
There was supposed to be a 🙂 at the end there!
Maybe we could make comments about welcome progress instead?
Or would that just be boring not starting the same pointless argument each time?
Anyway must be the heat!
I’m surprised at the number of premises that are being reported to have “superfast broadband” available and wonder if an audit of the consumer reality is more appropriate as a measure of the number of properties getting anything remotely like superfast (or as the USO info would have it, “decent”). Fibre broadband IS available to properties like ours, and is called “superfast” only because that is what the service provider’s product is called: if you pay ful-fat for it you get a steamy 4-6Mbps. That is not “superfast” by any stretch of the imagination, just super expensive for the way the service is provided to the cabinet, not how it is received at the property. The alternative is paying for standard ADSL and getting 0.5-1.5Mbps
As an afterthought, to add some context… the property I refer to is not a lonely and isolated windswept house on the side of a mountain on a dead-leg road – it is half a mile from the a66 and within 5 miles of Penrith, in a small community with a number of homes and businesses desperate for better broadband within a small area, who campaigned and asked to be included when the “superfast” was being rolled out, but were simply told that it wasn’t going to happen. Full stop.
Your service isn’t called superfast as it doesn’t provide download speeds in excess of 24mbps – just because it’s FTTC doesn’t make it “superfast”.
In terms of how many premises can currently access download speeds greater than 24mbps (whether they choose to purchase such services or not is up to the occupiers), the excellent Think Broadband site has stats updated monthly at national, regional, county and constituency level, so covers most eventualities. It also has a feedback mechanism if you believe there is an error when using its checker facility.
You are misunderstanding the “SuperFast” premises passed figures.
They only count properties that can actually achieve 24Mb/s or higher (or are estimated to do so).
Your property that receives 4-6Mb/s would certainly not be counted in the SuperFast premises passed figures, even if it is delivered from a fibre cabinet.
The fact your Internet provider might advertise your current broadband package as “SuperFast Fibre” is unrelated to the premises passed figures.
I am definitely misunderstanding Superfast – and thank you for those that highlighted that (in the absence of intel I am relying on openreach telling me I can get it) The idea that 93% of Cumbria can get it is baffling. The Think Broadband website is great – thanks for that tip. It says that Penrith and the Border gets 82.4%…but “This figure is based around everyone buying the fastest Virgin Media, KC or Openreach product available to them, based on current product availability. Distance limitations of ADSL2+ and VDSL2 are factored into the calculation.” So it doesn’t include people like us that refuse to pay for the fastest product available when it doesn’t provide a basic minimum or enough of a difference to ADSL, nor any people that don’t have it because it simply isn’t available to them.. (I will no doubt be corrected if that is wrong – and please do because we feel so desperately left out.)
If you can get a superfast service (e.g. FTTC estimated at over 24Mbps) then you are counted in the superfast figures, regardless of what product you choose to subscribe to. If you cannot receive a superfast service then you aren’t counted.
I’d be interested in a postcode? We are about (end August) to bring onstream our new dark fibre link to service the Allen Valleys and Northumbria. It starts at our Manchester-Edinburgh DF breakout on the south side of Penrith and goes east with breakouts at Langwathby, Melmerby and Alston before getting to Whitworth in the Allen Valley (and onwards to Newcastle etc). We also have a breakout at Melkinthorpe. We plan to start digging down the Eden Valley from those cabinets so perhaps we can help? We are also about to start digging up from Garsdale Head through Mallerstang and Nateby to loop round Kirkby Stephen and then east to Brough and west up the Eden Valley. Hopefully that dig will join with the south bound dig to give full coverage.
Barry
@NotSpotty You are misunderstanding again ref “The Think Broadband website is great – thanks for that tip. It says that Penrith and the Border gets 82.4%…but “This figure is based around everyone buying the fastest Virgin Media, KC or Openreach product available to them, based on current product availability. ”
On https://labs.thinkbroadband.com/local/E14000877 the 82.4% figure is available of a superfast service with a speed of over 24 Mbps. The impact of line length is visible if you look at the 30 Mbps figure which drops coverage to 81%..
The ‘figure is based around everyone’ is underneath the observed speed test results section is specifically referring to the ‘
Estimated Maximum Mean Download Speed: 58 Mbps
This figure is based around everyone buying the fastest Virgin Media, KC or Openreach product available to them, based on current product availability. Distance limitations of ADSL2+ and VDSL2 are factored into the calculation.’ section.
I give up on the trying to understand why the nubers would be generated that way but accept that they aren’t done for me! I’m baffled as to why figures would be published that say that an area is covered when it just means that boxes are covered? (and if you are not close enough to the box you don’t matter (as in your distance/dropoff is factored in).
Surely getting Cumbria (or anywhere else) connected should have a target of get people, homes and businesses, not just green boxes connected. By all means have the data saying how many gofaster green boxes there are, but for “normal” people who are after a bit of intel as to how much of Cumbria’s homes/businesses have real access (whether or not it has been ordered or installed) to say 10Mbps would surely help encourage policy and investment. I won’t be the only person to misunderstand what the “coverage” relates to. The think broadband website is clear for our property – max 2Mbps ADSL2+ – but I’d be fascinated to see the data for all properties in the county to see the real picture.
Hi All,
I’d be very interested in any suggestions on how FTTP builds are planned. We keep coming across small islands of FTTP across our patch which we have to build through and when we examine the FTTP plans at a property level there seems to be no rhyme nor reason to how the properties are selected. Its never the whole hamlet/village, rarely is it the whole postcode, frequently it will be say 3 out of 5 houses in a row, its never a full valley. Clearly there must be a method but it escapes me. Any suggestions gratefully received.
Barry
Is ‘HIPPING HALL, COWAN BRIDGE, CARNFORTH, LA6 2JJ’ one?
The FTTP being built under BDUK Cumbria is usually infill, so going into spots where existing services are sub superfast, so that is why not complete villages since most of the village is probably on VDSL2 and in range for superfast speeds.
Why some down 1 road and others at a similar distance off another road? You’d have to talk to planners and get access to lots of details, but the pot of money is limited and with the need to spread out over a whole county then you get patchy.
TheFacts,
I’ve checked the postcode and yes there is a State Aid flag set on it. However that doesnt mean every property in the postcode is affected. What we have to do is go back to DCMS and ask them for a list of properties in the post code that are flagged. Its at that point we get a definitive list of excluded, to us, properties. Hipping Hall was built out to a long time ago before the vouchers existed so it was 100% funded by the community and the State Aid stuff didnt apply. I would guess that any FTTP around there is more recent than our work and is a classic case of OR overbuilding B4RN. We see a lot of this going on, total waste of taxpayers money but sigh!
Barry
I make it 565 premises with both b4rn and Openreach FTTP available to them
So a 6% overlap – so I am either missing a lot of Openreach FTTP or B4RN.
What I don’t know is who decided to build first and who built first in each one.
Hi Andrew
Just to flesh out the numbers a bit, we have 37 PRPs registered covering 11767 properties which we are building out to. Of those 1129 (9.6%) have State Aid flags on them blocking us from getting GBVS or RGC vouchers. When we look at the 1129 we cannot see the logic of them. If there is a cluster then only some are slated for FTTP not all. So when we come to build we end up having to build the whole cluster and overbuild the FTTP otherwise it makes the build a mess. If the FTTP was done to some logical plan we could argue for bypassing the area on the basis of “job done”, but when the FTTP properties look like a shot gun blast with great big holes we cannot do that. I’m guessing that what OR are doing is proposing “x” properties for “y” funding and as “y” is not enough to do a tidy job they compromise on limiting the number of poles used etc. to make the numbers add up. There will usually be more properties closer to the cabinet but still <30Mbs which they ignore. Perhaps its a political decision based on who is shouting loudest?
When you overbuild do you get a good takeup supporting the local initative?
TheFacts
Interestingly we still get what is for us a typical take up of 60%. The local champions tend to get very annoyed by these partial FTTP builds which are divisive excluding chunks of their community. So they tend to push connectivity to B4RN even more than usual which helps take up. Also most folk like the simplicity of our 1 month contract 1Gbs no limits model and if you try to find a decent broadband speed in the country for £30/month you quickly find it impossible. So we are well able to compete with the OR products, we just get irritated at the waste of money duplicating things in such a lackluster way. Frankly if we cannot compete with OR then we shouldnt be playing the game!
Barry – don’t forget that OR are simply building within an authority financial envelope what their network allows from the current OMR.
If it is in the OMR as needing to be built then it is up for consideration to be built – so if, for example, a number of premises that have B4RN connections are not notified to the authority they will be on the authorities “to be built” list.
OMRs have been using premises identification now for a while rather than postcodes which should reduce any overlap.
Gadget
Yes I fully understand the OMR process but the fact is that its badly flawed when it comes to community projects. A single snapshot of plans for the next three years does not work with community projects because they pop up at random depending on how things evolve within communities. In my experience very few of the builds we are busy with now were known about at the last round of OMRs. So what is needed is a model that allows for that and incorporates clauses in contracts between LAs and OR that allow for sudden changes as events unfold. What seems to happen is that all the OR contracts give them the whip hand such that once an area is incorporated in their build, thats it, no changes possible. What should happen is that areas can be removed and other inserted, of the same value, instead so that OR keeps the same volume of work but community projects that pop up can be accommodated. That way we get the best of both worlds, those communities ready to put up funding/time/effort to do local builds can get on with them without overbuild risks, and OR does the other areas where communities dont want to do it.
So in my view the problem is with LA contracts! OR are better at them than LAs
Barry
Surely there is a working change control process within the LA contract to allow premises to be included or excluded, and the LA should obviously use it?
If so then the LA should be open to dialogue with community groups to help the LA change build plans to spend the money to the best advantage…… as you say then everyone wins.
@Barry It must be a tricky one to get right while not running into problems with the Competition Act. A ‘no compete’ arrangement where two competitors each agree to cover separate areas and not compete with each other for their customers contravenes it.
@Barry
Very informative posts.
@Barry, Gadget
The problem with a more reactive OMR process is that it’s more complicated than simply swapping out a few premises.
Given that the entire deployment plan for an area is modelled to maximise the number of premises covered (a contractual requirement), if you remove a block it may make the adjoining ones more expensive than another group elsewhere. Therefore you’d have to remodel then go through a change control process, all of which costs money (billable to the council I think).
I can see why some local authorities would take the view that they’d rather spend their money on deployment, put the onus on operators to participate fully in the OMR process and not worry too much about changes afterwards.
This extra 2,000 FTTP at the edge is welcome. I hope they have the facility to add several thousand more after the B-USO comes into force. Cumbria was well funded and BT’s monies will be still owed after 6 years, and the clawback has to be dribbled back.
It is good to see this as this effort was not listed on BDUK’s project pending tab, yet although small it represents a willingness to do more but you hope Cumbrians doe not become victims of prioritising the minimum B-USO 4G at the expense of a fibre solution.
The partial or selective availablity of FTTP will need to be addressed by Ofcom fully defining a ‘reasonable request’ for extending subsidised infrastructure.
@NGA – you seem to have come up with the words ‘reasonable request’ without explaing what it means in detail. Please explain.
@Facts a ‘reasonable request’ is an element of the existing telephony regime. Without it BT has discretion to refuse to extend what is now a heavily subsidised infrastructure.
A ‘reasonable request’ removes BT’s discretion to provide service even where it can do so.
It needs defining from the points in the network where excess bundles of fibre have been provided and are available to extend to premises beyond the 1,200m limits of the cabinet.
I know AGN versus Cabinet locations, but BDUK have subsidised at least 38,000 cabinets and spare fibres to the AGNs are available on each paths to each cabinet. This abundant provision needs to be liberated and I think defining ‘reasonable demand’ will assist in this process. And yes change OR planing rules for rural if that helps liberate the fibre in cof 205 cables.
… sorry discretion ‘not’ to provide…business parks and town centres are good examples.
This magic ‘reasonable request’ – what price do you expect members of the public to have to pay?
Even when it was a 15 million by 2025 target the idea of revamped Openreach Fibre on Demand product was stretching reality, but if there is to be a 100% target it becomes absolute lunacy to do 10 premises here and 10 premises there based on what 1 person wants. To deliver in volume you need to build across whole towns systematically.
Am sure everyone would love you to link to where Ofcom define reasonable request as part of the existing telephone regime – since it sounds like you are actually using the telephone USO regulation framework.
@NGA – to continue… some cabinets and fibres may have had gainshare and clawback so now the subsidy is not relevant?
Are you proposing that there are a number of locations across the UK where a single customer should be able to order an FTTP connection at a reasonable cost?
Liberating spare fibres – what does that mean? Who would pay who for what?
It looks like you have come up with some words but still can’t explain what they mean.
Andrew.. it is referenced in the Ofcom WLA 2017 conslusions…not fully defined but it can be. I have referenced the impossibility of 2025 and have only suggested this is another but missing piece in the jigsaw.
@Facts – the 2012 budget (£1.7bn subsidy + c£500m of allowable costs from BT)+clawback would allow substantial in-fill beyond the cabinet alwauys so because 1. distance limitations and 2 budgets set for that purpose.
Liberating spare fibres is only matter of better using the fibre count to the cabinet already subsidised and installed. You can see cof 205 cables on any Openreach slide ad search for the fibre count. Of course from TiJ it might only be 4, but the spare fibre will be there in most cases from AGN to TiJ. It does not have to be drawn again in rural from the AGN.
@NGA – you still do not explain ‘liberating’ it is not an engineering term I am familiar with.
Rolls on floor laughing – so a slide shows 205 fibre count cables so you assume ALL fibre installed is using this sort of cable.
So I may not have had my head inside thousands of Openreach cabinets more like a dozen, but don’t recall 205 or 96 fibre count cables hanging around. Especially as a lot of this is blown fibre too and fusion splicing the 200 or 96 adds to the complexity.
So I’ll ask again for a link so that people can read what the Ofcom WLA 2017 actually says, since your interpretations of documents has in the past differed a lot from what documents say, i.e. your interpretation tends to be one that fits your model of the broadband universe which is now very different to what it was a decade ago.
For those who don’t waste their evenings reading Ofcom paperwork like some of us
The Ofcom WLA reasonable request in my understanding is referring to a reasonable request for BT Group to provide access for things like LLU MPF/SMPF etc and this is at the wholesale level e.g. provider makes a reasonable request to install LLU hardware and sell services at that exchange. Similar with things like PIA/Duct and pole access.
Of course there may be a section I’ve missed and that is why I asked for a link so we can be sure that I’ve not missed some appendix talking about the public being able to make a reasonable request for fibre.
Given that the agreements are already in place for USO supply, with the bidding process concluding some time ago, I assume it’s too late to try to add new clauses anyway?
@NGA @Andrew
The Spine Cables from Exchange to AGN can be any combination of 24f, 48f, 96f,
144f, 240f, 276f count fibres, but are generally high count cables.
From the AGN to the Cabinet (or the TIJ as @NGA says) is 4 or 7 core Blown Fibre tubing with each tube dedicated to a Cabinet DSLAM, normally serviced with a 4f Blown fibre element. There will be spare tubes between AGN and Cabinet, and also between Cabinet and Cabinet, but there isn’t vast amounts of spare fibres sitting waiting to be used at or near each cabinet.
The whole purpose of blown fibre build is you can install what you need and can blow more or higher count elements later when required.
@NGA The only place in the network there are “spare” fibres is in the spine to the AGN. Everywhere else they are designed for a specific use. You might argue that if G.Fast is reaching an end of rollout, and some cabinets will never get G.Fast then those cabinets may have a spare fibre, but you dont build a new FTTP build using a “spare” re-purposed single fibre like that, you build from the AGN out, or you build more spine to a new AGN then out.
You may be able to make use of one of the spare tubes for some of the route if that is available (over the entire length) & advantageous but that is all.
Jim, Thanks, but slightly crazy, as it implies that these rollouts were planned with no consideration for those more 1200m from the cabinet, even though each and every budget included funds for in-fill.
New_Londoner .. the funding consultation for the B-USO is yet to be had so at best while being nominated a B-USO provider, who pays is yet to be agreed. It provides the opportunity to kick it down the road, while more projects get extension dates.
@NGA its not crazy, when it was designed, in-fill would be additional Cabs (particularly AIO cabs) in that plan running 4c or 7c Blown Fibre Tube to each cluster of ~4 cabs from an AGN makes perfect sense – you can deliver capacity for G.Fast, 2nd DSLAM’s and AIO cabs without any issue and without much civils works.
Building from the AGN is where FTTP is designed. Getting AG nodes deeper into the network is the best legacy from Phase1 BDUK builds as everything is affordable from that point.
In addition, when you design FTTC, you have to work back from the only points you can intercept the copper D Side. When you then design FTTP overlay, you certainly dont want to be hamstrung by having to work from a specific location out, when that location is likely sub optimal to the best path design for FTTP. AG nodes are placed for optimal future build out, which is why they are frequently not next to or near to the FTTC cabinets they serve.
It’s also what you fail to acknowledge when you look at the cost per cab subsidy, there is a much wider package of works to consider than just the individual cabinet build cost, and its respective fibre path.
Andrew, Fibre on Demand was launched in April 2014 nationwide by then CEO Olivia Garfield, in the presence of current CEO Clive Selley. The invention of limitations came later. It is all documented, including the repeated promises made to the Welsh Assembly.
It is not unrelated to the availability of nearly £1bn which includes the Capital Deferral to complete works in rural.
You must have asked yourself the following question. Why was it always BT’s plan to hand back most of the subsidies while leaving rural upgrades unfinished? Even here in Cumbria, only 2,000 extra premises means monies will be outstanding after the B-USO comes into force.
Don’t bother trying to teach me broadband history – Fibre on Demand has had its time – end of. If Clive Selley was present then how exciting…if he was a true believer of the Fibre on Demand vision why is there not increasing resources to allow for for 1000’s of on demand orders a month then? Rather than things like the Community Fibre solution which will generally be much higher numbers of lines converted as part of a build.
Why plan to handback because the contracts that were signed had the clause in them and Openreach via BT Group was contracted to build to a certain point. If as you assert the contracts were open ended then why all the announcements of targets when things were signed, rather than talk of minimums and a hope to stretch money to reach a much higher figure.
Andrew, ..VULA remedy WLA Annex 7, para 7.25.. which is very incomplete but a start..
Fibre on Demand, or demand aggregation in support of further FTTP extensions cannot be ignored as builds continue and project completion dates get extended to 2023 and beyond.
Low targets .. the bid strategy was about cash flow, less about coverage.
@NGA VULA requirements are not applicable to the general public, they are obligations on Openreach to their wholesale CP customers.
Do you have an example of where a CP has made a reasonable request for local access to an
existing FTTP build and it has been refused?
VULA doesn’t make any requirement on Openreach to build new infrastructure where they have none. The best example to give you is with the current FoD product. Lets use an example of a FoD order that passes 3 other premise from the local DP. The ordering CP has no exclusivity to service these other premises passed by the FoD build, they become GEA-FTTP available (which is VULA) and any other CP is free to service those customers. Without VULA and the reasonable request, the FoD CP could ringfence those 3 premises and only they could provide service to them as build under FoD.
VULA is what stands in the way of BT Groups soundings on shared investment models. They cant allow one CP exclusive use of that infrastructure in the way CityFibre can partner with Vodafone for example.