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BT Quotes 15 Premises on Shetland £725k to Get Broadband

Friday, Jun 10th, 2022 (11:59 am) - Score 4,032
Money Pounds Savings for UK Homes

The MSP for the Shetland Islands (Scotland), Beatrice Wishart (LibDem), has helped to highlight the challenge of connecting some very remote rural communities after one group of 15 properties was quoted £725,000 to get faster broadband installed under the 10Mbps+ Universal Service Obligation (USO).

Sadly, it’s long been expected that the Scottish Government’s £600m Reaching 100% (R100) project with BT (Openreach), which is busy extending fixed “superfast broadband” (30Mbps+) coverage across rural parts of the country (almost entirely via FTTP), would not be able to reach every property.

At present, the main part of Shetland has already seen a number of fibre-based FTTC (and a few FTTP) broadband deployments, thanks largely to the laying of several subsea fibre optic cables via Shetland Telecom. The latest links to Yell and Unst only went live a year ago, but that has so far only really been used to connect public sector sites. In addition, R100 and BT have an ongoing project to add several new subsea fibres (here), which are due to complete later this year.

However, ensuring the islands have access to good network capacity is only one part of the challenge, with running fibre to individual homes and businesses continuing to be a much bigger and more costly obstacle to overcome. According to Beatrice Wishart (MSP), some 1,847 properties on the Shetland Islands are outside the scope of the main R100 build.

Solutions for Remote Shetland

The Scottish Broadband Voucher Scheme (SBVS) attempts to provide a backup for these areas via vouchers worth up to £5,000 to help connect those properties for which there is no roll-out plan, which can in some areas be combined with the UK Government’s similar scheme to boost vouchers for homes up to £6,500. But this too runs into problems in some of the most remote and thus expensive areas.

The USO is another option and was aimed at those who can’t yet receive a slower 10Mbps+ connection and aren’t currently planned to get one in the next 12-months. Ofcom states that 99,500 UK premises fall into this gap (i.e. those outside of both fixed line, fixed wireless and suitable 4G coverage). But this too has a cost threshold of £3,400 (rising up to £5,000) per premises – shared across a community, which limits how far it can go.

The MSP’s example of a Shetland community of 15 properties (Clousta) being quoted £725,000 by BT reflects a cost estimate (desktop quote) under the aforementioned USO. Put another way, that’s a cost of around £48,333 per premises and is obviously well beyond the level of existing voucher schemes.

Beatrice Wishart said (Express and Star):

“Out of more than 1,800 properties only four applications have been received for the main voucher, and only three have so far been issued. For those that need a fibre connection the quoted costs from commercial providers are beyond belief.

A constituent has shared with me a recent quote from BT of £725,000. This is after the deduction of support grants from Ofcom and works out to around £48,000 each for the 15 properties in the community. This is clearly unaffordable.”

At this point it’s important to recognise that this is not all BT’s fault, but rather a reflection of the fact that running optical fibre over a long distance and into some very remote and sparse communities is not, and never has been, a cheap or easy thing to do.

Civil engineering is inherently expensive for every operator, and there aren’t many alternatives to Openreach on the Shetlands. As BT said about the Shetland example: “Quotes reflect the physical cost of delivering that solution and sometimes, as a result, can be unavoidably high.”

NOTE: We assume this build would be FTTP, since copper-based FTTC has effectively been retired from new deployments.

We’ve covered such challenges before in a lot more depth (here) and, sadly, £725,000 is not the biggest quote we’ve seen (a few others have stretched into the £1m to £2m territory). The Government’s new £5bn Project Gigabit programme has similarly recognised that those in the final 0.3% of UK premises would be too expensive for even that project to reach, which is why they’re currently investigating alternatives (here).

The reality is that some extremely remote premises may not get FTTP, although 4G / 5G mobile coverage does continue to improve, while fixed wireless may be another option and the advent of LEO based ultrafast broadband satellites (e.g. Starlink) is also on the table; but the latter is rather expensive to take as a monthly service. Hopefully the Government will soon set out how they plan to tackle such issues.

In addition to all this, there also remains a general lack of awareness about the existence of both the broadband USO and the wider gigabit voucher schemes. Engaging with such schemes can also be confusing for a lot of people, which is one reason why they’re unlikely to be a long-term solution for everybody. Vouchers are the sticking plaster – they don’t have a big impact, but they do enable politicians to say there are options, even if they too can run out of steam.

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Mark-Jackson
By Mark Jackson
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and .
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Comments
26 Responses
  1. Avatar photo John says:

    Starlink anyone? there isn’t much will to save taxpayer money by this government but almost 1 million to benefit a handful of people is surely a huge cost

    1. Avatar photo simon says:

      Starlink at this time does not work north of Cumbria – When they sort that it will be ideal for many people especially with the roaming package now on sale. I could have used it on the NC500 lately!

    2. Avatar photo Jimmy says:

      Not true. I work at a wisp in the Highlands and we’ve lost customers to starlink.

    3. Avatar photo simon says:

      Jimmy,

      Really? I guess the people who actually made the sats and launched them have this map wrong then? https://www.starlink.com/map

      Someone tried to use in on the NC500 (From Spain) and it was not working for them.

      Sounds like your customers lied to you.. Or Starlink is lying, I will go for the former if it’s all the same to you 🙂

    4. Avatar photo Gary H says:

      John, what has this to do with your political jibes ? The cost was for excess charges under the USO payable by the 15 properties that requested the USO provision, nothing at all to do with Tax payers money or ‘this government’, whichever Government you were referring to, be that the SNP or Conservatives in Westminster.

    5. Avatar photo Gary H says:

      Simon, might be an idea to take a look at the map that shows the ‘Highlands’ region before citing the Starlink map and throwing allegations of lying around.

      The Highlands extends south past Fort William an area the Starlink map shows as available. Just because you cant get coverage round the NC500 in the Highlands doesn’t mean you cant get Starlink in the Highlands.

    6. Avatar photo Ryan says:

      simon you claim no “Starlink at this time does not work north of Cumbria” based on the map you posted it works in parts of the Cairngorms national park is incorrect.

      Jimmy could be telling the truth as some areas on the map that shows as available is classified as the Highlands Scotland like Fort William.

      True the area of North coast 500 isn’t since the Srarlink coverage doesn’t go north enough in the UK to Inverness and above where nc500 is.

    7. Avatar photo simon says:

      @Ryan – fair point. I thought the highlands was much more north – my bad.. In any case Starlink would be great for the north. Vodafone was good in most places I stopped but it would be good if they could make a mini didi Starlink in a dome – I could then put it next to my maxview Sat dome and then one less thing to unpack out the garage and set up.

    8. Avatar photo James says:

      Starlink not available there right now but it will be in 7 to 9 months.

  2. Avatar photo Sunil Sood says:

    I imagine the potential costs would reduce once R100 has rolled out and I see it is a desktop survey which are known for being frequently inaccurate.

    1. Avatar photo El Guapo says:

      My survey was £10k +vat actual survey involving openreach coming out and having a look. The street next to me has FTTP. A total distance of 150m until a house that has it. I chose not to give openreach £10k.

    2. Avatar photo simon says:

      Indeed considering fibre is currently £5.55 a meter – 10K seems a lot even with other works

    3. Avatar photo An Engineer says:

      Unfortunately for FTTPoD they don’t plan to spur off of the nearest street with full fibre. They build from deeper into the network and, depending what work needs to be done, it can get pretty expensive.

      At very least on top of the new fibre cabling you’d need various other hardware and to pay people to install it into chambers or on poles.

    4. Avatar photo El Guapo says:

      Yes all of this is right. I had hope with the ‘near network’ trial that they could hopefully do something but they can’t. I even had a nice chat with the CEO and their chief of ops. But nothing could be done apart from me shelling out £10k.

      Thankfully I can get 5G and it works very well for me. I hope that netomnia will consider my street in their future rollout which they’ve earmarked my town for.

    5. Avatar photo simon says:

      I had good 5G but it went down hill after people realised it was here – Luckily now it’s just a backup and as I don’t use it that much Three have me on a discount – but the timing was good with the main line taking over.

      I hope it stays fast for you.

    6. Avatar photo Paul M says:

      El Guapo, find a friend who has FTTP and set up a Mikrotik 60GHz “wireless wire” link or similar. Am using such an arrangement as I type this. Has been rock solid.

  3. Avatar photo james smith says:

    Is 4G or 4G mobile a cheaper option?

  4. Avatar photo Mike says:

    We had a survey from Openreach under USG near Whithorn in Dumfries and Galloway a couple of weeks aho.

    They said it would cost £464k and would benefit 10 properties. The 5k voucher is of absolutely no use, it isn’t fit for purpose really. It’s designed to help those hard to reach properties not already included in a roll out so by it’s nature they’re likely to be expensive connections.

    We currently can only get 6Mbps and are not in good enough 4g coverage to make it viable.

    1. Avatar photo simon says:

      Mike, you do know you can get Starlink right?

      Seriously all 10 of you could – for about £500 upfront and £80 a month. As there are 10 of you I wonder if the £5000 voucher would cover you all? Just thought I would mention it!

      Problem solved

    2. Avatar photo simon says:

      Random address in that area results (will auto delete in 1 day)

      https://ibb.co/pynWz4m

    3. Avatar photo Mike says:

      The voucher has to be applied for by a registered ISP capable of delivering a satisfactory service in the area. I’m not aware of a way to contact Starlink to request this, only to place an order, money up front. Even if you could, I doubt the Scottish Government considers them a registered ISP for the purposes of the voucher scheme. I could enquire about it but it’d take weeks to get anywhere with it.

      I also was aware of Starlink service, but the last I saw it said it was still in beta and was not a consistent service yet. There were reports of frequent drop outs. I need a reliable connection, so would need an alternative option available in case of drop outs. At £90 a month plus whatever I’m charged for the alternative, it’s getting expensive.

      Thank you for the info though, appreciated.

  5. Avatar photo Martin says:

    Openreach are currently heavily involved rolling out FTTP to country towns on the mainland. It is inevitably cheaper, for a commercial rollout, to base teams on the mainland than on offshore islands. I suspect for Shetland their best hope might be some sort of Altnet.

    1. Avatar photo Martin says:

      Just checked the Openreach website and Lerwick (main town in Shetland) is on the commercial roll-out.

  6. Avatar photo Ex Telecom Engineer says:

    Maybe they could add these properties to the OneWeb trial, since OneWeb LEO’s follow longitudinal orbits.

    “At present OneWeb has launched a total of 358 small c.150kg Low Earth Orbit (LEO) ultrafast broadband satellites into space and their initial plan is to build a constellation of 648, which is enough for a reasonable level of global coverage by around June 2022”

    https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2021/11/isp-bt-and-oneweb-sign-uk-broadband-distribution-deal.html

    https://satellitemap.space/oneweb.html

  7. Avatar photo Hywel says:

    Is fttp allowed to be put electricity poles? I’ve got 11kv poles right up to my garden as well as openreach poles to my house, seems silly to have to maintain both sets.

    1. Avatar photo RobC says:

      No, for safety reasons the Power Distribution companies will not let you attach fibre to 11Kv poles.

Comments are closed

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