Northumberland UK Council to Setup Own Fibre Builders Team

The Northumberland County Council in England appears to be proposing a new plan to the UK Government, which – if funding can be secured – would see the local authority using their own skills and resources to help dig new “full fibre” (FTTP) broadband ISP networks into remote rural communities (inc. installations direct to homes).

At present the existing iNorthumberland project, which is working alongside Openreach (BT) and the Government’s Building Digital UK programme, is trying to make “superfast broadband” (24Mbps+) capable FTTC and a few ultrafast FTTP networks available to “over” 95% of the county (they’re at around 94% today). The project is behind schedule (95% was supposed to be achieved by the end of 2018) but is still making progress.

On top of that they’ve also launched a £1m voucher scheme to help reach digitally disadvantaged communities (here). Separately the North of Tyne Combined Authority (NTCA) is supporting a £24m project to rollout a new Gigabit capable “full fibre” network to public sector sites across rural parts of Newcastle, North Tyneside (Tyne and Wear) and Northumberland (here), although that won’t be much help to rural areas.

Assuming the iNorthumberland programme doesn’t change or get extended again then it may still end up leaving around 4% of premises without access to superfast broadband, which occurs at a time when the Government are pushing to spread “gigabit-capable” broadband to every home by the end of 2025.

The council’s solution seems to be one that would involve using their own resources and skills to help build full fibre or similar networks, as well as to install them into homes (Northumberland Gazette).

Councillor Nick Oliver, Cabinet Member for Corporate Services, said:

“It is one of those light-bulb moments when you start to think about how we connect some of our most rural homes to broadband, when major companies are unwilling or unable to link them up.

Within the council, we already have in-house vast expertise in terms of planning, laying trenches, building infrastructure and IT.

So rather than waiting for other organisations to develop longer-term solutions, we just want to get on with installing broadband and connecting communities – something that many of us just take for granted.

As a council, we’re committed to a can-do approach and working to ensure everyone can benefit from key services and feel part of the wider community, wherever they live in the county.”

The idea raises a whole raft of complicated questions, such as what services would they provide? Are they proposing to own and manage the network? The latter would be a risky idea as local authorities tend to have an appallingly history when it comes to building their own consumer broadband networks (e.g. Digital Region in South Yorkshire (here) and Aylesbury Vale Broadband in Buckinghamshire (here)).

On the other hand if they intend to provide a service to existing ISPs / operators by helping to build such networks – or at least part of them – then that would be more interesting, although at present no solid details about the proposed approach and costings have been revealed.

The council also needs to recognise that there is no magic fix to delivering full fibre and in rural areas there’s no escaping the hefty costs involved in such deployments. Getting involved in network building is thus not for the faint of heart and carries with it many risks – both politically and economically.

Otherwise we await some solid details of the scheme to see what sort of proposition is actually planned, although it’s suggested that if the plan is approved then work could begin this year. Openreach has previously claimed that some rural FTTP builds could cost as much as £4,000 per premises, while Ofcom uses a lower figure of £2,500 (here). In either case it’s an expensive problem to resolve.