Essex UK Set Digital Strategy to Boost Gigabit Broadband and 5G

The Essex County Council in England has published a new Digital Strategy document, which among other things sets out their plans to ensure that – come 2025 – “superfast broadband” (30Mbps+) will cover “all premises“, while “gigabit-capable broadband” should reach 85% and 4G becomes available to 99% (geographic).

As you might expect from such a document, the strategy is big on promises, albeit somewhat light on any solid details about funding sources and delivery. On the other hand, many of the commitments seem to be broadly aligned with those of the UK Government’s existing programmes, particularly their £5bn Project Gigabit broadband scheme and the £1bn Shared Rural Network (SRN) deployment for 4G.

The strategy also notes that “superfast broadband” in Essex is currently already on track to reach 99% of all premises in Essex by 2023, which they say will leave round 8,000 premises in very hard-to-reach areas stuck on poor broadband speeds and “no current upgrade plans“. But they’re now busy designing an “effective approach … to reach them as soon as possible“.

Based on the known activity (mostly commercial builds), the same strategy predicts that, by 2023, around 80% of Essex premises will have access to gigabit-capable broadband speeds (currently it’s about 60% – with over 30% via FTTP). We should point out that a lot of commercial build plans (e.g. Openreach’s) will continue on beyond 2023, so the 85% target sounds fairly viable – with or without public funding.

As for mobile connectivity, the document notes that Essex will seek to reach “near” 100% coverage of 4G (this usually translates to 99%+) and complement this with 5G coverage of over 50% by 2025 – geographic reach. The key connectivity goals are thus summarised below, although there are also plans to boost skills and other aspects of “digital“.

Essex’s Digital Connectivity Goals for 2025
➤ Superfast speeds available at all premises in Essex.
➤ Gigabit-capable services available at more than 85% of premises in Essex.
➤ 4G services available across 99% of the Essex geography.
➤ 5G services available at all key employment locations and in identified priority areas.

Suffice to say, it will be interesting to see what sort of changes and how much investment the council itself is able to commit to help achieve all this, particularly given the current financial challenges that everybody seems to be facing. However, the council has a fairly good track record when it comes to supporting broadband upgrades (e.g. Superfast Essex), and the county is also home to a good number of full fibre altnet providers (e.g. Gigaclear, County Broadband, Lightspeed Broadband etc.).

Cllr Lesley Wagland OBE, Cabinet Member for Infrastructure, said:

“Providing Essex residents and businesses with access to excellent digital connectivity is at the top of my list of priorities and a key foundation for Levelling Up Essex.

The Digital Strategy will build upon driving not only infrastructure rollouts for gigabit-capable broadband and mobile connectivity but will also focus on providing opportunities and access to digital technologies. We want to make sure no one is left behind when it comes to the digital revolution.”

On the subject of gigabit-capable broadband. The last Open Market Review (OMR) for Essex, which completed last year, indicated that planned commercial coverage for gigabit-capable broadband would reach approximately 662,021 premises within the next 3 years, and would therefore leave the remaining 163,824 premises without access.

In addition to the above, a further 226,828 premises were marked as ‘under review‘ by the OMR, which means there are commercial plans to reach them, but there is also a lot of uncertainty about whether such deployments will be achieved. In any case, history suggests that Essex may be one of the less challenging counties to hook-up.