Rotherham Scraps Plan for Free Wi-Fi Network in Town Centre

The Rotherham Council in South Yorkshire (England) has scrapped its original 2018 plan to deploy a free public WiFi (wireless broadband) network to serve the town centre area, which occurred after the chosen supplier went through some unspecified changes and showed a “general lack of engagement” in progressing the contract.

A recently published meeting document reveals that the plan, which was originally proposed in May 2018, pledged that public access Wi-Fi would be delivered across Rotherham town centre through a concessionary contract (i.e. granting a supplier exclusive access to install their kit on local street furniture, such as street lamps and CCTV poles etc.).

The contract was then tendered in December 2019 and a chosen supplier identified in January 2020 (they don’t say who). However, by November 2020, the Council had been unable to progress the formal award and enter into contract with the chosen supplier “due to changes within the company and a general lack of engagement from them in progressing the contract award”.

As a result of all this, the Council took the decision to “withdraw the award and abandon the procurement“.

Rotherham Council Statement

Alternative options had been investigated by the Council and a number of discussions had taken place with commercial organisations and telecommunication providers already working with the Council. Since the Council originally agreed to the project, the landscape had changed and other Councils were facing difficulties with similar schemes in that concessionary contracts were not achieving the level of projected income for the chosen supplier to make them viable. This had been attributed to the communications market reducing the cost of personal data and more town centre businesses offering free Wi-Fi to customers.

However, the Council hasn’t given up, and it’s now exploring the potential to utilise its own building assets to extend the current corporately managed free public Wi-Fi network to key areas of the public realm within Rotherham town centre – this would include Forge Island, the new library and markets development.

BT is also understood to have already deployed a number of their smart WiFi kiosks (i.e. the Street Hubs, formerly called InLinkUK kiosks) around the town centre, which may have also helped to dampen the need for the council to build their own network.