Broadway to Harness Low Voltage Poles for UK Broadband Rollout UPDATE

Rural broadband developer Broadway Partners (aka – ISP Broadway Broadband) has today reached an interesting new agreement that will enable them to harness Western Power‘s low voltage poles. The deal will be used to support their on-going deployment of gigabit-capable “full fibre” (FTTP) infrastructure to homes.

At present the operator has already completed a limited deployment of Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) infrastructure, as well as several different Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) networks across the United Kingdom, albeit largely focused upon rural parts of Wales and Scotland. Going forwards they also have an aim to extend their “gigabit-capable … fibre” network to cover 500,000 homes and businesses by the end of 2022.

As part of this they’re already making some use of Openreach’s (BT) existing cable ducts and poles to run their own fibre (Physical Infrastructure Access) and, after today’s agreement, they’ll be able to harness Western Power’s low voltage electricity poles for a similar purpose.

The announcement isn’t specific about the details, although generally speaking a low voltage line is usually taken to mean something akin to the wires that run directly to houses (240v+), which may also include some wooden poles (although some of those poles may be more in the medium voltage range). By comparison high voltage often reflects those huge steel towers you see (unless underground).

Michael Armitage, CEO of Broadway Partners, said:

“We have been delivering broadband connectivity to digitally disadvantaged areas in Wales and Scotland since our first commercial operations launched in 2016. We continue to roll out Fibre across southwest Wales and have just reached an agreement to use Western Power’s low voltage poles in addition to our existing Openreach PIA (Physical Infrastructure Access), which means we can now roll out these services faster than ever.

We have already started to unbundle local exchanges in Chepstow, Abergavenny, Monmouth and Pontypool, with more to follow as we continue to roll out Fibre across Monmouthshire. Broadway Partners is committed to ‘connecting the unconnected’ and this is just another step toward our goal in ensuring everyone receives fast and reliable broadband services, regardless of where they choose to live and work.”

Sharing broadband infrastructure with electricity networks has been done before, although it often requires special consideration in order to become truly cost effective, otherwise there are good reasons why such an approach is not widely used. One of the main issues is safety.

Dealing with electricity cables requires a different set of skills, considerations and knowledge, as well as greater precautions (you can’t just ask ordinary fibre engineers to do it). Likewise coordinating electrical and telecoms work can be tricky, which may in turn add delays and thus costs.

The UK Government are actively pushing for more of this through their proposals to update the Access to Infrastructure (ATI) Regulations 2016 (here).

UPDATE 20th August 2020

Broadway informs that their engineers are trained on how to work on low voltage poles, and also have method statements and risk assessments for access which Western Power have approved. The operator added that they have a mature management system and a behavioural safety program backing up their ISO certification.