The Government’s £2.53bn Superfast Broadband Programme (SFBB) has so far helped to extend 24-30Mbps+ capable UK ISP networks to 5,440,086 extra premises since 2012 and the latest take-up data to March 2022 shows strong demand, with adoption in most of the original build areas now exceeding 80%.
We haven’t done one of these updates in a long time, which is largely because the SFBB project has run its course and is now being superseded by the new £5bn Project Gigabit programme. Nevertheless, we felt it might be useful to do one final update before putting this one to bed, although a handful of delayed contracts are still ongoing (e.g. Phase 2 of Connecting Devon and Somerset and part of Scotland’s R100 contract).
The following figures reflect the percentage % of premises (homes and businesses) that have chosen to take a 24Mbps+ capable service (usually via FTTC, FTTP or Fixed Wireless Access technology), albeit specifically those which have been delivered via state aid support under the Building Digital UK team’s SFBB project (i.e. % subscribed of premises passed).
The data is split between the first two phases of the programme. The most recent contracts have tended to focus on remote rural areas, which since 2018 have increasingly involved deployments of “full fibre” (FTTP) technology to reflect the Government’s changing focus toward “gigabit-capable” services (we think SFBB has delivered nearly 500k of these). Prior to that, hybrid fibre FTTC (VDSL2) was the dominant technology for the majority of builds.
We should add that older BDUK contracts defined “superfast” as offering download speeds of 24Mbps+, while more recent ones have increased this to 30Mbps+ (this aligns with the definition used by Ofcom and the EU).
BDUK Phases One (Finished Spring 2016)
Supported by £530m of public money via the Government (mostly extracted from a small slice of the BBC TV Licence fee), as well as significant match funding from local authorities and the EU. The public funding is then roughly matched by BT’s private investment. Overall it helped to extend “superfast broadband” (24Mbps+) services to cover 90% of premises in the United Kingdom.
BDUK Phase Two (Technically on-going)
Supported by £250m of public money via the Government, as well as match funding from local authorities, Local Growth Deals and private investment from suppliers (e.g. BT, Gigaclear, Airband, Call Flow etc.). This phase extended superfast broadband services to 95% of premises in time for the end of 2017, but some newer contracts are on-going (e.g. the Welsh Government’s new programme).
Most of these contracts also include a clawback (gainshare) clause, which requires suppliers to return part of the public investment as customer adoption of the new service rises. The funding from this is being reinvested to further improve network coverage and speeds via extension contracts. Efficiency savings from earlier contracts can also be reinvested, but we don’t have any recent data on that (possibly worth c.£300m).
So far it looks as if a total of around £800m could in theory be returned via clawback from BT and a fair amount of that has already been committed. The extra funding has so far helped to raise the UK coverage of 30Mbps+ capable networks to 97%+ and it’s still helping (98%+ seems viable).
The following tables break the take-up data down by each BDUK local authority (project area) and devolved region (Scotland, Wales etc.), although for the proper context these percentages should ideally be considered alongside the most recent premises passed (network coverage) data, which can be seen at the bottom of this article. Overall, 80.84% of premises have adopted the new service (up from 72.81% in H2 2020).
NOTE: Some counties have divided their deployments into separate contracts. For example, Phase One in Shropshire doesn’t include the ‘Telford and Wrekin‘ area because that is part of a separate Phase Two contract inside the same county. On top of that, the contracts were all signed at different times and so are at different stages of development.
Project Area (BDUK Phase 1) | Uptake % (Dec 2020) | Uptake % (Mar 2022) |
Bedfordshire & Milton Keynes | 77.71 | 81.94 |
Berkshire | 73.52 | 80.37 |
Bucks & Herts | 79.49 | 87.59 |
Cambridgeshire | 71.23 | 78.42 |
Cheshire | 75.09 | 81.08 |
Cumbria | 71.43 | 82.41 |
Derbyshire | 69.69 | 81.12 |
Devon & Somerset | 70.76 | 78.86 |
Dorset | 70.71 | 81.67 |
Durham | 69.53 | 80.09 |
East Riding (Yorkshire) | 73.48 | 80.73 |
East Sussex | 75.51 | 83.65 |
Essex | 75.02 | 81.60 |
Greater Manchester | 67.58 | 78.98 |
Hampshire | 72.82 | 82.48 |
Herefordshire & Gloucestershire | 71.16 | 79.91 |
Isle of Wight | 70.55 | 81.22 |
Kent | 74.34 | 82.77 |
Lancashire | 67.73 | 77.91 |
Leicestershire | 73.95 | 84.15 |
Lincolnshire | 73.09 | 81.85 |
Merseyside | 65.64 | 75.72 |
Newcastle | 68.84 | 80.64 |
Norfolk | 74.96 | 83.38 |
North Lincolnshire | 70.46 | 78.97 |
North Yorkshire | 71.81 | 81.59 |
Northamptonshire | 76.08 | 83.10 |
Northumberland | 73.9 | 81.69 |
Nottinghamshire | 71.77 | 81.62 |
Oxfordshire | 74.36 | 81.54 |
Rutland | 76.27 | 81.33 |
Shropshire | 72.63 | 81.88 |
South Gloucestershire | 71.86 | 76.15 |
Staffordshire | 70.34 | 80.26 |
Suffolk | 73.98 | 81.56 |
Surrey | 75.06 | 80.81 |
Warwickshire | 76.93 | 82.53 |
West Sussex | 77.33 | 84.77 |
West Yorkshire | 68.64 | 77.94 |
Wiltshire | 73.83 | 79.57 |
Worcestershire | 76.38 | 84.35 |
Devolved Administrations | ||
Highlands and Islands | 71.16 | 78.84 |
Northern Ireland | 73.97 | 77.23 |
Rest of Scotland | 67.41 | 75.79 |
Wales | 68.01 | 77.87 |
So far in this phase an overall total of 62.91% of premises have adopted the new service (up from 38.73% in H2 2020). We note that a number of Phase 2 schemes also consist of more than one contract, so you may see several figures being reported for certain areas in order to reflect each of those deals (this is sadly very confusing, but that’s just how they do it).
Both of the recent contracts in Scotland (R100) and Wales will also be covered in this table because they have received some funding from the original BDUK programme. But one oddity this time is that some areas have seen their take-up figures collapse (e.g. Lincolnshire went from 59.39% to 9.99%), which we think is likely to be an error.
Project Area (BDUK Phase 2) | Uptake % (Dec 2020) | Uptake % (Mar 2022) |
Bedfordshire & Milton Keynes | 65.38, 24.51, 24.19 | 81.94, 47.71, 47.4 |
Berkshire | 35.71, 7.89, 48.95, 13.66 | 26.17, 7.89, 64.42, 22.95 |
Black Country | 60.24 | 76.31 |
Buckinghamshire | no data | no data |
Bucks & Herts | 63.77 | 74.64 |
Cambridgeshire | 7.23 | 30.75 |
Cheshire | 66.21 | 77.33 |
Cornwall | 65.21, 43.97 | 77.29, 60.03 |
Cumbria | 56.77 | 68.63 |
Derbyshire | 50.28 | 63.87 |
Devon & Somerset | 7.15, 7.54 | 6.7, 4.88, 5.52, 2.68 |
Dorset | 71.19, 37.19 | 79.18, 52.75 |
Durham | 63.33, 23.95 | 72.99, 31.96 |
East Riding (Yorkshire) | 67.91 | 77.2 |
East Sussex | 72.83, 15.48 | 82.38, 37.95 |
Essex | 67.49, 33.76, 5.31, 8.72, 34.92, 25.37, 0, 13.68, 15.44, 12.5, 8.64, 0 | 76.74, 39.58, 28.07, 20.95, 55.68, 47.43, 12.36, 53.61, 42.05, 27.5, 10.23 |
Greater Manchester | no data | 78.98 |
Hampshire | 63.85 | 75.3 |
Herefordshire & Gloucestershire | 46.76, 16.24, 17.45, 16.27, 9.38, 45.37, 60.68 | 46.76, 20.64, 32.91, 25.35, 22.12, 61, 74.51 |
Hertfordshire | no data | 30.29 |
Kent | 76.08 | 87.1 |
Lancashire | 56.69 | 66.9 |
Leicestershire | 62.31, 7.73 | 74.42, 35.71 |
Lincolnshire | 59.39 | 9.99 |
Norfolk | 67.66, 0 | 78.23, 31.35 |
North Lincolnshire | 60.39 | 73.51 |
North Yorkshire | 68.9, 30.15 | 76.63, 49.13 |
Northamptonshire | 67.79, 13.16, 14.4 | 77.77, 23.16, 29.13 |
Northumberland | 59.9 | 70.2 |
Nottinghamshire | 58.5, 15.7 | 70.06, 29.75 |
Oxfordshire | no data | 23.17, 9.14 |
Rutland | no data | no data |
Shropshire | 70.03, 7.11 | 79.8, 1.61 |
South Gloucestershire | 66.18, 36.48 | 75.71, 54.92 |
South Yorkshire | 63.29, 16.8 | 73.79, 35.57 |
Staffordshire | 59.79 | 72.98 |
Suffolk | 66 | 75.74 |
Swindon | 8.68 | 8.68 |
Telford & Wrekin | 74.62 | 83.96 |
Warwickshire | 65.3, 25.19 | 75.3, 46.78 |
West Oxfordshire | 16.55 | 35.21 |
West Sussex | 70.85 | 79.47 |
West Yorkshire | 57.32 | 68.06 |
Wiltshire | 63.68, 11.67, 42.53 | 72.8, 14.66, 61.43 |
Worcestershire | 66.49, 28.04 | 74.87, 57.45 |
Devolved Administrations | ||
Highlands and Islands | no data | no data |
Northern Ireland | 57.79 | 62.04 |
Rest of Scotland | no data | 22.17, 9.34, 28.21 |
Wales | 15.99, 18.36, 13.29 | 35.09, 30.81, 31.62 |
IMPORTANT: Take-up is a dynamically scaled measurement, which means that at certain stages of the scheme it may go up or even down depending upon the pace of deployment (i.e. premises passed in any given time-scale), although over time the take-up should only rise.
Explained another way, earlier phases of the roll-out were easier and faster to deploy, so you could expect to see a bit of a yo-yo movement with the take-up % sometimes falling if lots of new areas were suddenly covered. Some contracts are also younger than others and will thus take time to catch-up. On top of that BDUK’s roll-out pace has slowed to a crawl as it reaches remote rural areas, which will give take-up a chance to climb.
A number of other factors can also impact take-up, such as the higher prices for related “fibre” services, as well as customers being locked into long contracts with their existing ISP (they can’t upgrade immediately) and a lack of general awareness (locals don’t always know that the faster service exists) or interest in the new connectivity (if you have a decent ADSL2+ speed and only basic needs then you might feel less inclined to upgrade).
The fear of switching to a different ISP may also obstruct some services. In other cases the new service may run out of capacity (i.e. demand is higher than expected), which means that people who want to upgrade are prevented from doing so until Openreach resolves the problem, although the scale of this issue is fairly small.
Now, for some context, here’s the latest progress report on related contracts for the same period (this doesn’t show any match-funding from private investment). Take note that this also appears to have included some limited output from the latest R100 programme in Scotland (under Scottish Government) and new contracts in Wales.
Total BDUK Contracted Funding | Total Local Body Contracted Funding | Current Total Contracted Premises | Delivered to Date (March 2022) | |
Bedford & Milton Keynes | £8,130,000 | £7,996,055 | 52,120 | 52,673 |
Berkshire | £5,153,017 | £4,414,612 | 41,153 | 37,630 |
Black Country | £2,988,349 | £2,988,349 | 37,302 | 37,389 |
Buckinghamshire | £1,669,677 | 620 | 139 | |
Bucks & Herts | £10,837,000 | £10,966,379 | 92,880 | 92,651 |
Cambridgeshire | £8,250,000 | £19,535,104 | 109,795 | 109,951 |
Cheshire | £6,461,000 | £20,078,490 | 83,521 | 82,263 |
Cornwall | £5,960,000 | £13,631,224 | 15,411 | 15,928 |
Cumbria | £19,959,699 | £18,134,066 | 120,892 | 122,184 |
Derbyshire | £9,579,550 | £8,999,882 | 102,554 | 103,177 |
Devon & Somerset | £58,463,405 | £48,766,010 | 321,056 | 301,033 |
Dorset | £13,741,841 | £16,035,448 | 81,501 | 79,425 |
Durham | £13,189,267 | £11,544,061 | 115,790 | 115,683 |
East Riding (Yorkshire) | £10,507,459 | £8,360,865 | 50,704 | 50,999 |
East Sussex | £13,640,000 | £13,000,000 | 68,401 | 68,257 |
Essex | £14,254,755 | £19,908,227 | 156,131 | 151,846 |
Greater Manchester | £3,440,000 | £5,622,293 | 41,363 | 40,062 |
Hampshire | £15,262,308 | £12,974,524 | 104,509 | 104,543 |
Herefordshire & Gloucestershire | £31,090,658 | £34,512,090 | 161,440 | 146,186 |
Hertfordshire | £852,250 | 407 | 368 | |
Highlands & Islands | £50,830,000 | £75,600,000 | 152,700 | 152,819 |
Isle of Wight | £2,490,000 | £2,490,000 | 17,617 | 17,649 |
Kent | £17,063,510 | £14,874,136 | 142,589 | 143,109 |
Lancashire | £14,670,000 | £18,995,621 | 147,334 | 145,803 |
Leicestershire | £7,968,896 | £10,884,318 | 74,320 | 74,669 |
Lincolnshire | £16,110,000 | £17,910,000 | 143,661 | 138,687 |
Merseyside | £5,460,000 | £2,798,448 | 43,905 | 43,966 |
Newcastle | £970,000 | £941,158 | 6,760 | 6,697 |
Norfolk | £24,650,000 | £25,822,223 | 207,893 | 208,659 |
North Lincolnshire | £4,181,007 | £2,880,963 | 30,833 | 30,200 |
North Yorkshire | £28,160,000 | £30,184,726 | 183,891 | 180,504 |
Northamptonshire | £9,856,669 | £11,580,588 | 79,591 | 78,575 |
Northern Ireland | £11,454,000 | £218,929,646 | 120,939 | 95,958 |
Northumberland | £10,687,867 | £12,047,087 | 49,620 | 49,361 |
Nottinghamshire | £7,850,000 | £10,023,577 | 68,666 | 70,426 |
Oxfordshire | £8,184,500 | £13,514,396 | 79,103 | 79,885 |
Rest of Scotland | £50,000,000 | £99,075,000 | 587,362 | 590,432 |
Rutland | £1,000,000 | £1,670,000 | 7,175 | 9,903 |
Scottish Government | £20,990,000 | £583,917,634 | 23,965 | 6,780 |
Shropshire | £19,288,948 | £12,722,000 | 68,359 | 67,945 |
South Gloucestershire | £3,370,000 | £3,321,666 | 20,044 | 20,233 |
South Yorkshire | £9,610,239 | £13,436,778 | 101,168 | 100,573 |
Staffordshire | £9,620,000 | £7,587,242 | 80,725 | 81,394 |
Suffolk | £26,940,000 | £28,710,603 | 129,923 | 128,655 |
Surrey | £1,310,000 | £19,020,081 | 79,193 | 79,263 |
Swindon | £928,882 | £950,000 | 19,936 | 17,010 |
Telford & Wrekin | £2,157,000 | £1,843,000 | 8,822 | 8,698 |
Wales | £69,040,000 | £207,608,641 | 761,291 | 730,325 |
Warwickshire | £14,432,236 | £14,477,934 | 68,183 | 65,933 |
West Oxfordshire | £1,600,000 | £1,556,675 | 4,788 | 4,681 |
West Sussex | £8,011,244 | £7,510,000 | 53,758 | 54,229 |
West Yorkshire | £11,019,827 | £17,293,741 | 105,590 | 101,979 |
Wiltshire | £9,270,000 | £16,247,720 | 82,539 | 78,885 |
Worcestershire | £8,387,032 | £11,248,746 | 63,481 | 63,814 |
£738,470,165 | £1,797,663,954 | 5,573,274 | 5,440,086 |
The above figures only include 24Mbps+ capable premises in BDUK intervention areas.
Getting above 97% is terrific, and with ~£600m untriggered clawback, it would be possible to get above 99%+. All we need is a white paper from BT.
If Parliament paid attention to the numbers, then this would be requested. One more inquiry might have focused on re-using the monies owed rather than focusing on a procurement process which has been talked about since 2018 and unproven.
Instead we have Boris’s Gigabit proposal intent on over building what has already been subsidised at the expense of constituencies like Tiverton and Honiton, which went from the 5th worst served Broadband English constituency (Jan19- 82.3%) in 2019 to joint worst with Penrith and the Borders in this June with 85.5% for >30Mbps services.
The opportunity has been there for some time. It should be taken.
@NGA
“All we need is a white paper from BT”
This is not true. You ought to be aware by now that any “untriggered clawback” funds belong to each of the local bodies that placed the contract and not to BT. Therefore decisions relating to the use of this money will be made by each of those local bodies. They may decide to use it for further investment in broadband or they may decide that the existing provision is sufficient and that they have other, more pressing demands for funding.
Not so. At least half the funds are under full control of DCMS, while ERDF related allocated for Broadband and the consequences should be spent for the purposes intended. The objective was to go as far as possible with the funds intended.
@NGA
“At least half the funds are under full control of DCMS…”
Let’s agree that none of these funds belong to BT, so your comment about all that is needed is a white paper from the company is clearly incorrect.
@New_Londoner ..the untriggered capital deferral of ~£600m is currently under BT’s control and it is free to make suggestions how it could be used to finish rural upgrades. Such a proposal would be welcome I think. It makes more sense than overbuilding what has already been subsidised.
@New_Londoner The Gov does have a need to push fibre as far as possible and BT has a need to close rural exchanges.
@NGA
“…the untriggered capital deferral of ~£600m is currently under BT’s control…”
Any such money is in reality the property of the local bodies and so decisions relating to the way it is used belong to them rather than to BT. As such, there is not a lump sum of £600m waiting to be invested but many smaller sums, each of which will be channelled to a separate body. Given current shortfalls in local government funding, I suspect much of this money will not be invested in further broadband deployments.
This neglects BDUK biggest and most enduring success which is the 600k+ full fibre delivered deep in rural before ‘Gigabit’. Much more fibre in-fill was possible and expected but BT failed to step forward and use the opportunity to train more of its own people. Rather than using the money available their decision in my opinion was to game the process for which many customers are still without upgrades and the BT shareprice is what it is. BT’s separation in 2017 arising from DCMS inquiry in 2016 triggered the change. Ofcom could have issued some warning shots in 2012 and they could have, but the evidence suggests that they did nothing until ordered to in 2016-17.
This is also not true. Politicians wanted to deliver improved broadband to as many people as possible as quickly as possible within the available budget. FTTC rather than FTTP provided the means to do that, hence the decision to favour the former in the initial phases of the BDUK programme.
People stating that FTTP is the better long-term solution ignore the pressure at the time from constituents on the mailboxes of MPs. They also ignore the enormous difference in the speed of deployment that was possible through the focus on FTTC, as well as the difference in the cost per premise.
It is easy to show how wrong this point is. Of the original £1.7bn, only ~£600m would be needed for cabinets/fibre paths.
BT has only ~90k PCPs in its network, and BT commercial investment would do the first 50k cabinets.
£600m/40k creates a subsidy budget of £15k each, which was all that was needed if BT turned up with £10k on average which is tiny – £400m of the £1bn BT offered in 2012.
How would politicians know anything apart from what BT group told them?
This was IMHO and inquiries have this to be the case, BT Group management deciding to game the costs, with hold their own capital and deny Openreach the opportunity to do the job they could have done.
If you wish to offer this argument the PCP numbers in the network prove an alarming amount of intent. The budget and ambition always required more and always required full fibre, hence the universal offer of FoD in 2014.
BT was further separated in 2017 following its failure to invest. This followed directly from 2015-16 DCMS select committee inquiry. The now Lord Vaizey made the case at the committee that BT had at that time paid back all the clawback and the capital. August 2021 – and most of the money is still owed and outstanding (confirmed in writing by BT), and now the record is disappearing from the footnotes in BT’s accounts.
What would politicians know when they are so mis-informed they do not even know when they are lying to a select committee?
@NGA
It would be so much easier if you dropped your various hints about some sort of conspiracy. Your comments about gaming the system” become irrelevant once people understand that payments were only made upon production of invoices and other cost information. Any pre-contract estimates have no bearing on what is actually paid.
The reality is that all the public funds are likely to be recovered through clawback mechanism when the various BDUK contracts reach full term.
As for the “ambition to go as far as possible”, your assertion is inconsistent with the contracts that were awarded. As a taxpayer I’m grateful that the days of spending the available budget, irrespective of value for money, are behind us. If you believe this is wrong then by all means take it up with the current BDUK team, but those decisions were taken a long time ago.
You may not agree but I firmly believe that there are more important things than broadband to spend limited public funds on. Wasting billions on FTTP to the final few % of properties rather than spending it on much-needed hospitals, schools and other services is ridiculous. A combination of FTTC, LEO satellite etc should ensure universal access to a base-level service at far lower cost.
Have a debate if necessary but “alternative facts” don’t help anyone.
@New Londoner after 10 years there is record of BT’s investment. Monies may be returned but there is no transparency.
@New-Londoner The original Wales contract had unit costs of £200 a premise passed not actuals. There is no published reconciliation to actuals in Wales or evidence of when BT’s capital played a part in scoping the rollout.
I agree Boris’s Gigabit proposals (£5bn) to overbuild what has been recently subsidised at the expense of completing rural has no business case and should not be done.
Government having got to >97% relatively cheaply could use the monies outstanding to complete rural, and begin accelerating the closure of exchanges. The £5bn could be spent on something else.
@NGA
“Monies may be returned but there is no transparency”
“There is no published reconciliation to actuals in Wales”
I’m pretty sure that the relevant local bodies would pursue matters if any contractual obligations to repay money have not been fulfilled. Whether there is any transparency or not is another matter and is probably covered by clauses in the contracts.