Confusion Over GBP5bn Project Gigabit Broadband Rollout in Scotland

The Scottish Government have complained that the UK government are yet to provide any “sense” of the delivery timescale, or how much funding will be allocated to it, from the £5bn Project Gigabit broadband rollout. The SG also claims that the project may only target the “cheapest and easiest to reach premises“, at the expense of rural areas.

Project Gigabit seeks to extend 1Gbps download (c.200Mbps upload) capable networks to reach at least 85% of UK premises by the end of 2025 (currently 65%+) and then “nationwide” by 2030 (here and here). The funding released from this will depend upon how the industry responds (so far only £1.2bn has been unlocked), but it is being targeted at the final 20% of hardest to reach premises (commercial builds are expected to do the first 80%+).

Meanwhile, Scotland’s £600m Reaching 100% (R100) contract with Openreach (BT) is already doing quite a good, if somewhat slower than expected, job of extending 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP networks across many of the country’s remaining rural areas by 2027. But a question mark remains over how many Scottish premises will still need a gigabit upgrade once R100 completes.

As a result, the Building Digital UK team and the Scottish Government are currently conducting an Open Market Review (OMR) in order to identify precisely which areas will not benefit from gigabit speeds under existing builds – this covers any related plans for the next 3 years (here). The OMR finished last month and will shortly be followed by a final Public Review (PR) in order to confirm Project Gigabit’s intervention area.

However, BDUK and the Scottish Government are still known to be discussing the thorny issue of how the related funding and procurement will be managed for Scotland. The SG will no doubt want to manage everything itself, while BDUK has been trying to centralise everything around a new Dynamic Purchasing System (DPS) to avoid some of the delays that struck earlier projects (those were shopped out to local authorities).

The catch is that BDUK is taking a long time to get their procurements in England rolling (update) and the longer the two sides take to agree a solution for Scotland, the longer it will be before they actually deliver something practical for constituents. But now Scotland’s Economy Secretary, Kate Forbes, has written an open letter that suggests the two sides may still be struggling to find common ground.

Scotland’s Economy Secretary, Kate Forbes, said:

“It is vital that Scotland benefits from the UK Governments’ £5 billion Project Gigabit, which we think could be rolled out effectively in parallel with R100 delivery. As it stands, there is no sense of how much of the £5 billion will be allocated to Scotland and no timescale for making any such commitment.

Furthermore, we understand that the UK Government’s preferred approach for Project Gigabit is to target the cheapest and easiest to reach premises across the UK, at the expense of more costly rural premises. That would see Project Gigabit have far less of an impact in Scotland, where we have disproportionately more rural premises than other parts of the UK. I have written to the Minister of State for Media, Data, and Digital Infrastructure, Julia Lopez MP, and the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, Michael Gove MP, on this matter and have been disappointed with their responses which appear to confirm that there will be no flexibility for Scotland.

The House of Commons’ Public Accounts Committee has been highly critical of the UK Government’s approach to Project Gigabit. In their report, Delivering Gigabit Capable Broadband, published in January 2022 they said “we are concerned that the Department’s focus on accelerating coverage through rollout by commercial operators rather than by prioritising those areas it knows are hardest to reach risks some of the areas that need improved connectivity most being once again left behind.

Having seen the transformational impact that our R100 investment is having in island and remote rural communities, we will continue to make the case for flexibility, which would ensure that gigabit access can be extended to those most in need of future-proofed connectivity. Without it, Project Gigabit will not deliver what the public expects and is, in fact, more likely to result in a new and more entrenched digital divide between the gigabit haves and have nots.”

In fairness, we think the Economy Secretary might be being a bit unfair in stating that Project Gigabit will only “target the cheapest and easiest to reach premises across the UK, at the expense of more costly rural premises“.

As above, the project is clearly designed to target the final 20% of premises – those that won’t be reached by existing or commercial builds, which are by definition harder and more expensive to reach. No doubt there will be some suburban patches in there too, but this is mostly well beyond the realm of the truly low-hanging fruit.

As ever, politics may be playing a role here, since the longer this goes on – without a clear agreement – then the longer the rollout will take to reach completion. Naturally, the Scottish Government won’t want to be blamed for any delays, but it will still take both sides to tango.

In response to all this, the UK Government (DCMS / BDUK) confirmed (Press & Journal) that Project Gigabit is “specifically focused on making sure hard-to-reach areas don’t miss out on even faster gigabit speeds” and that the “final funding allocation” would depend upon the outcome of their OMR and PR. A range of alternative proposals for those in the most remote final 0.3% of premises are currently also still being debated (here).

Finally, the Scottish Government included a brief update on the rollout progress of their R100 build.

The Latest R100 Update

All of the R100 contract build in the North and South contracts, and 95% of contract build in the Central contract will be fibre to the premises, capable of providing gigabit speeds (up to 1,000 Mbps), and far exceeding our superfast commitment (30 Mbps). As of 28 February 2022, over 5,900 connections had been delivered across the three R100 contracts. A further 9,600 connections are currently in build with over 19,300 premises surveyed with build ready to commence.