BT to Scoop LOT 1 of Scotland’s R100 Superfast Broadband Rollout

The Scottish Government has awarded BT (Openreach) the final LOT 1 contract – as preferred bidder – to deliver their new £600m R100 (Reaching 100%) project, which originally (here) aspired to make “superfast broadband” (30Mbps+) ISP networks available to “every single premises in Scotland” by the end of 2021.

As a quick recap, the R100 project was established as a follow-on contract to help upgrade around 180,000 premises that were still stuck on slower broadband services as a result of being missed by the original £442m Digital Scotland (DSSB) project with BT (Openreach). Overall this represents around 5% of homes and businesses in Scotland who cannot yet order a network capable of 30Mbps+.

Back in October 2019 it was announced that BT had won the contracts for both LOT 2 (Central Scotland) and LOT 3 (South Scotland), which was due in no small part to them being the only bidder (here). By comparison the award of LOT 1 (Northern Scotland) has taken longer, partly because several suppliers were involved in the bidding (BT, Axione UK and Gigaclear) and additional requirements were attached.

R100’s overall aim is to encourage greater use of “full fibre” (FTTP) broadband technology where possible and as part of that it specified 9 mandated areas for LOT 1 where 25% of premises must be able to get speeds of at least 100Mbps (on a Gigabit-capable connection).

We received some indications today from our sources that BT might have secured the LOT 1 contract (preferred bidder status) and upon enquiring a spokesperson for their network access division, Openreach, was able to confirm this. At present a formal press release has not been issued but we expect one to follow.

Andrew Hepburn, Openreach’s Major Programmes Director for Scotland, told ISPreview.co.uk:

“We’re delighted to be named preferred bidder for the North of Scotland. We’re proud of our record over the last six years and wanted to finish the job. We look forward to signing contracts for all three lots, subject to due diligence and further governance, and getting on with the vital job of bringing fast, reliable broadband to the people of Scotland.”

At present we don’t yet have are any details about the technology mix, coverage expectations or completion time-scale for any of these contracts. We should also caveat that, despite all of the devolved Government’s earlier talk about aiming to reach “every single premises“, the official procurement document only committed its “gap funded intervention to deliver [30Mbps+] … to as many premises as possible by the end of 2021.”

The delays in awarding this contract mean that 2021 is almost certain to be missed (either that or it will be a smaller / weaker rollout than hoped). In keeping with this we note that a similar contract award in Wales resulted in a much smaller deployment than planned (here), not least due to the difficulty of trying to attract BT – or any other suppliers for that matter – to deliver into such challenging areas without a much bigger subsidy.

On the other hand Scotland’s budget of £600m was significantly larger and may be able to bridge that gap better than Wales could, although we won’t know for sure until the details have been published in the near future. A big question mark also exists over how this will be balanced against the UK Government’s proposal to invest £5bn to ensure that every home can access a “gigabit-capable” broadband service by the end of 2025 (here); this of course depends upon the outcome of the 2019 General Election.

Lest we forget that the Scottish Government’s Rural Economy Secretary, Fergus Ewing (MSP), previously pledged to quit if he failed to deliver on the new £600m R100 project (here). “If I don’t deliver this by 2021, I think it will be time for Fergus Ewing to depart and do something else, and leave the job,” said Fergus. Awkward.