Fibrus Win Gigabit Broadband Rollout Contract for Cumbria UK UPDATE

The fourth and so far, largest, contract under the Government’s new £5bn Project Gigabit broadband rollout scheme – worth £108 million – has today been awarded to UK ISP Fibrus, which will upgrade broadband for more than 60,000 hard-to-reach homes and businesses across Cumbria (England).

At present, Fibrus has already deployed their gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network – using a mix of commercial build and public investment – to 190,000 premises across parts of Northern Ireland and the North of England. After that, the operator has a target of raising this to 500,000 premises by March 2024 (around 350,000 of which will be in Northern Ireland).

By comparison, Project Gigabit aims to extend 1Gbps capable (download speeds) networks to reach at least 85% of UK premises by the end of 2025, before hopefully achieving “nationwide” coverage (c. 99%) by around 2030 (here). Commercial investment is expected to deliver around 80% of this, which leaves the government’s scheme to focus on tackling the final 20% (mostly rural and some sub-urban areas), where the private sector alone often fails.

The project uses a number of different approaches to tackle the problem (e.g. vouches and investment in dark fibre builds), but the largest part of the scheme involves a gap-funded subsidy approach – the Gigabit Infrastructure Subsidy (GIS) programme. This is where smaller local and larger regional contracts are awarded to network operators and ISPs who can help to build their gigabit-capable infrastructure across the final 20%.

The Building Digital UK (BDUK) team, which manages Project Gigabit, awarded their first GIS contract to Wessex Internet for North Dorset (Lot 14.01) in August 2022 (here), which was followed by GoFibre picking up the contract for both Teesdale (Lot 4.01) in September 2022 (here) and the one for North Northumberland (Lot 34.01) in October 2022 (here).

The Cumbria (Lot 28) project being announced today is a bit different because, unlike those above (they were all smaller ‘Local Supplier’ contracts), it is the first large-scale Regional Supplier contract and is valued at £108m. Various rural towns, villages and hamlets across the region – from Grasmere to Gilsland – are expected to benefit, with work starting immediately and the first connections going live during spring 2023.

Dominic Kearns, CEO of Fibrus, said:

“Fibrus considers it a privilege to deliver a transformative project for Cumbria which will change the lives of people living in rural and regional areas. Fibrus is committed to supporting local communities, ensuring any work undertaken in our name supports apprenticeships and allows more people to reap the benefits of full fibre.

This win helps us further our mission and commitment to bring fast, reliable and affordable broadband to all.”

The investment in Cumbria is also expected to spark new apprenticeship and employment opportunities in the county. Fibrus is set to create at least 90 apprenticeships over the next 3 years – covering a range of roles from underground and overhead cabling to surveying – and invest £50,000 to establish an apprentice training academy near Penrith.

The contract award is also notable because it went to Fibrus, rather than a larger player like Openreach (they normally scoop the biggest deals), which appears to bode well for the Government’s attempts to support alternative networks at scale. But it probably didn’t hurt that Fibrus had also secured and is busy delivering on a similarly large deployment contract under Project Stratum in N.Ireland.

More areas including Cornwall, Hampshire, Shropshire & Telford, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Suffolk are all in line for Project Gigabit contract awards by summer 2023, with others to follow further down the line.

UPDATE 1st Dec 2022 @ 6:54am

Fibrus appears to have setup a dedicated page for this contract – Hyperfast GB, which includes a very useful coverage map and lots of other details. The operator also appears to be positioning itself to secure other contracts under Project Gigabit, so any future wins will also fall under this site.