Q1 2019 BDUK Superfast Broadband Adoption Progress by UK Region

The Building Digital UK scheme, which since 2013 has helped to extend “superfast broadband” (24Mbps+) networks to 5,123,530 extra premises (up by +46.9K since Q4 2018), has just published its latest take-up data to the end of March 2019. Coverage continues to grow, albeit slowly as contracts near their end.

The figures below reflect the percentage of homes and businesses that have chosen to take a superfast broadband service (usually delivered via FTTC, FTTP “full fibre” or Fixed Wireless Access), specifically those which have been delivered via support from the BDUK programme (i.e. % subscribed of premises passed).

This data is split between the first two phases of the programme and some more recent extension contracts. Phase 1 was broadly dominated by Openreach’s (BT), while the on-going Phase 2 contracts have attracted a mix of extension deals alongside BT and several alternative network providers. Later phases also have a much bigger focus on remote rural areas and now involve a lot more FTTP to reflect the Government’s changing priorities.

We should also point out that older BDUK contracts defined “superfast” as offering download speeds of greater than 24Mbps+, although more recent ones have increased this to 30Mbps+ in order to align with the definition used by Ofcom and the EU. Admittedly in today’s market of “full fibre” focused deployments (usually 1000Mbps+ capable) the definition of “superfast” does tend to feel out of date.

BDUK Phases 1 (Finished Spring 2016)

Supported by £530m of public money via the Government (mostly extracted from a small slice of the BBC TV Licence fee), as well as significant match funding from local authorities and the EU. The public funding is then roughly matched by BT’s private investment. Overall it helped to extend “superfast broadband” (24Mbps+) services to cover 90% of homes and businesses in the United Kingdom.

BDUK Phase 2 (Technically on-going)

Supported by £250m of public money via the Government, as well as match funding from local authorities, Local Growth Deals and private investment from suppliers (e.g. BT, Gigaclear, Airband, Call Flow etc.). This phase extended superfast broadband services to 95% of premises in time for the end of 2017, although some contracts are on-going until c.2020 and will reach beyond 95%.

The BDUK contracts also include a clawback (gainshare) clause, which requires the suppliers to return part of the public investment as customer adoption of the new service rises. The funding can then be reinvested to further improve network coverage and speeds via future deals. Efficiency savings from earlier contracts can also be reinvested.

So far it looks as if a total of around £721m could in theory be returned via clawback from BT and more than £210m (Jan 2018 figure) from efficiency savings, which may rise again in the future (details here and here). BDUK has estimated that this reinvestment might be enough to boost the UK coverage of fixed line superfast broadband networks to around 97% by March 2020 (possibly 98%+ after that), but this is not an official target.

The Universal Service Obligation (USO) mentioned above is a reference to the Government’s new legally-binding pledge to ensure that those in the final 2-3% of premises, which may not benefit from BDUK’s effort, can request a download speed of at least 10Mbps. This is due to be introduced from the end of 2019 (details here).

BDUK Phase 1 Take-up (Average %)

The following tables break the take-up data down by each BDUK local authority (project area) and devolved region (Scotland, Wales etc.), although for the proper context these percentages should ideally be considered alongside the most recent premises passed (network coverage) data, which can be seen at the bottom of this article. Overall 57.67% premises have adopted the new service (up from 55.25% in December 2018).

NOTE: Some of the counties have divided their deployments into separate contracts. For example, Phase One in Shropshire doesn’t include the ‘Telford and Wrekin‘ area because that is part of a separate Phase Two contract inside the same county. On top of that the contracts were all signed at different times and so are at different stages of development.

BDUK Phase 2 Take-up (Average %)

So far in this phase an overall total of 42.11% (up from 39.59% in December 2018) of premises have adopted the new service and some projects have yet to report. We note that a number of Phase 2 schemes also consist of more than one contract type and so you may see several figures being reported for certain areas in order to reflect each of those deals.

IMPORTANT: Take-up is a dynamically scaled measurement, which means that at certain stages of the scheme it may go up or even down depending upon the pace of deployment (i.e. premises passed in any given time-scale), although over time the take-up should only rise.

Explained another way, earlier phases of the roll-out were easier and faster to deploy, so you could expect to see a bit of a yo-yo movement with the take-up % sometimes falling if lots of new areas were suddenly covered. Some contracts are also younger than others and will thus take time to catch-up. On top of that BDUK’s roll-out pace has slowed to a crawl as it reaches remote rural areas, which will give take-up a chance to climb.

A number of other factors can also impact take-up, such as the higher prices for related “fibre” services, as well as customers being locked into long contracts with their existing ISP (they can’t upgrade immediately) and a lack of general awareness (locals don’t always know that the faster service exists) or interest in the new connectivity (if you have a decent ADSL2+ speed and only basic needs then you might feel less inclined to upgrade).

The fear of switching to a different ISP may also obstruct some services. In other cases the new service may run out of capacity (i.e. demand is higher than expected), which means that people who want to upgrade are prevented from doing so until Openreach resolves the problem, although the scale of this issue is fairly small.

Now, for some context, here’s the latest progress report on related contracts for the same period (this excludes related match-funding from private investment).

Funding and Premises Passed Progress (BDUK Phase 1 + 2)

The above figures only include 24Mbps+ capable premises in BDUK intervention areas.