DCMS Committee Demands Answers on UK Gigabit Broadband Target UPDATE

The Chair of the cross-party DCMS Select Committee, Julian Knight, has criticised the UK Government for having “failed to answer” a key question in their recent report, which called for a detailed plan to show how it would deliver on its revised-down target for “gigabit-capable broadband.” The committee is now seeking a fuller response.

The Select Committee published the results of their inquiry into the Government’s rollout programme for “gigabit-capable” broadband and 5G mobile back in December 2020, which raised some significant concerns around the issue of deliverability (here). In particular, it noted how much the target had changed in a short period of time and thus sought a plan to show that the latest target would be achievable.

Under the former Prime Minister, Theresa May, the goal was to achieve nationwide coverage of FTTP by the end of 2033, which was considered by many to be viable but still challenging. Deploying truly universal full fibre does tend to be a 10-20 year project in most countries, which is just a natural reflection of the huge cost and civil engineering challenges involved.

After that the current PM, Boris Johnson, pulled this forward to 2025, which is a target (i.e. more of a political than practical one) that was widely regarded within the industry as being virtually impossible to achieve. A few months later this was promptly watered down to include other “gigabit-capable” technologies, which made it more viable but still highly unlikely to be achieved by 2025. Last month it was revised downward again, this time targeting the new 85%+ goal by the end of 2025 (i.e. much more realistic).

The DCMS report thus warned it “would not be acceptable having abandoned one unrealistic target, for the Government to fail to meet a second less ambitious target through lack of effective planning or inadequate investment” (technically this is their fourth, not second, tweak to the target).

On top of that they also conclude that the original goal of achieving “majority 5G coverage by 2027,” which in fact isn’t even mentioned in the 2019 Conservative Manifesto, was also at risk, given rulings banning the use of equipment from high-risk vendors (e.g. Huawei). But in fairness, the term “majority” can often mean a little over 50% and commercial deployments alone should easily achieve that.

At the time the Government was then given until 22nd February 2021 to respond to the select committee report, but their response (here and here) has now been criticised for failing to answer some of its key questions around deliverability.

Julian Knight MP, DCMS Committee Chair, said:

“We raised urgent questions in our Report to Government requesting that it set out detailed plans about how it would deliver on its revised-down target for gigabit-capable broadband and crucially, how likely it was to be met.

Ministers have failed to answer that key question, among others, and provided inadequate responses elsewhere. Today I have written to Secretary of State Oliver Dowden calling for a full response to our recommendations and to points that have gone unanswered. These are questions that cannot be avoided.”

The Chair has asked for a full Government Response by 1st April 2021, which is of course “April Fools” day in the United Kingdom. The challenge for the Government here is that, unlike Phase One of the original Building Digital UK Superfast Broadband programme, they don’t just want to hand all the contracts to BT (Openreach) again (they will no doubt still secure some big ones) and instead prefer to help foster the further growth of alternative networks (altnet).

The catch is that it becomes more difficult to know precisely how much coverage can be achieved by the industry and when, which is partly why the Government has so far only released £1.2bn of their £5bn budget for the programme by 2025 (i.e. this may grow an extra 5%+ of gigabit coverage between now and 2025, with the assumption being that commercial projects will largely achieve up to 80% of UK coverage). The Government has said that more funding will be released if the industry proves it can deliver (i.e. the proof will be in the appetite for contracts).

We think 85% is a viable target for 2025, albeit still a tricky one to prove before any contracts have even been awarded.

UPDATE 11:49am

The Government’s response to the original report has in fact been published, but it was just a little harder to find on their new website. Updated with links above.