Gigaclear Legal Challenge Hits Scotland R100 Broadband Project

The Scottish Government has informed ISPreview.co.uk that LOT 1 of their £600m R100 (Reaching 100%) project, which recently approved BT as the “preferred bidder” and aims to extend “superfast broadband” (30Mbps+) ISP networks to “as many premises as possible“, has become the subject of a legal challenge by Gigaclear.

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). The award of LOT 1 (Northern Scotland) took a bit longer (here), partly because several suppliers were involved in the bidding (BT, Axione UK and Gigaclear) and additional requirements came attached.

The project, which is already running a year behind schedule, aims to encourage greater use of “full fibre” (FTTP) technology 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). At the time we asked the Scottish Government for a bit more detail and they have today responded, albeit not in the way we expected.

Scottish Government’s Letter to ISPreview

Dear Mark Jackson,

Thank you for your email of 21 November to Scottish Ministers requesting information on the Reaching 100% (R100) programme. As a member of the Scottish Government’s Digital Connectivity team, I have been asked to reply.

On Thursday 19 December, the Minister for Energy, Connectivity and the Islands confirmed to Parliament that the Scottish Government had signed contracts with BT plc for lots two and three, on 16 December.

The Minister also let Parliament know that lot one, covering the north of Scotland, is subject to a legal challenge and we can therefore not comment further.

The Minister will update Parliament again in due course, on progress with the north and also to provide some detail on the lot two and three bids.

I hope you find this information useful.

Yours sincerely

Mick Doherty

A bit of checking reveals that the legal challenge emanates from rural fibre optic ISP Gigaclear and as usual this makes it difficult to get much information (organisations usually don’t say much during on-going legal cases). Nevertheless it’s highly likely that this will add a further delay to at least part of the R100 contract.

As a fibre builder Gigaclear doesn’t currently have any FTTH broadband networks in Scotland (they’re mostly focused on England) and few were thus surprised to see that they didn’t scoop LOT 1. The operator has suffered some well documented problems and significant delays across many of their other state aid supported contracts since late 2018 (example).

An Openreach Spokesperson said:

“We can’t comment on any legal challenge relating to the north lot of the R100 programme and are firmly focused on delivery of our contracts in Central Scotland and South of Scotland.”

Naturally we’ve asked Gigaclear for a comment too and will update again when those arrive, if they arrive (as above, they may be unable to say much).

UPDATE 4:58pm

Gigaclear have responded to say they won’t be commenting.