BDUK Consults on Gigabit Broadband Coverage in Cumbria UK

The Government’s Building Digital UK programme has begun a new consultation to help them identify what existing or planned commercial gigabit-capable broadband coverage exists in Cumbria (England), which will help to establish the areas where public investment may be needed to rollout the service.

At present the existing Connecting Cumbria (CC) project with Openreach (BT) has already helped to extend “superfast broadband” (24Mbps+) networks to around 95% of premises in Cumbria (i.e. 127,000 extra homes and businesses), but the focus is now turning to future gigabit (1000Mbps+) capable connections.

As part of this the Government has already pledged to invest £5bn on a new scheme – the UK Gigabit Programme (F20), which aims to ensure that at least 85%+ of UK premises can access a gigabit-capable connection by the end of 2025 (here). The effort for this will primarily be targeted at the final 20% of premises (i.e. the hardest to reach rural and some sub-urban areas), where commercial investment models tend to fail.

In England the new programme is intended to be much more centrally managed than the original Superfast Broadband (SFBB) programme and that explains why the consultation for Cumbria is being run by BDUK, rather than the county council. In any case the first step is in identifying precisely which areas are not currently expected to benefit from gigabit speeds under existing deployments, or any plans for the next 3 years.

According to the new consultation, which will be open to responses from the public and stakeholders until 9th March 2021, BDUK has so far identified a total of 143,864 premises (white areas – see map below) that may be in need of intervention under their programme. We can expect similar consultations like this to follow for other parts of England (how this scheme will work in Wales, Scotland and N.Ireland has yet to be decided).

Assuming all goes well, the new procurements for gigabit infrastructure – handled through a Dynamic Purchasing System (DPS) – should begin during the Spring 2021 (around April). The hope is that the first contracts under this could be awarded before the end of 2021, but such things can be complicated and we wouldn’t rule out some delays.

The Government have also forewarned (here) that they consider the “final 1%” of premises “could be prohibitively expensive to reach” via even their gigabit programme (this is the same sort of area as their 10Mbps USO was supposed to fix and that has suffered problems).