Openreach Prep Return of UK Fibre Community Partnerships in Early 2023
Openreach (BT) has informed ISPreview that its Fibre Community Partnership (FCP) scheme, which works with disadvantaged parts of England, Wales and Scotland to help co-fund the deployment of new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP networks, will become available again for new applicants “early” in 2023.
Projects under the FCP programme, which tend to be co-funded by Openreach and a mix of contributions from the community or gigabit voucher schemes, typically focus on upgrading smaller or more remote rural areas that don’t currently have access to an ultrafast broadband network. But the scheme was halted earlier this year after the operator said that “soaring demand” had put too much strain on their ability to deliver (here).
The pause helped to explain why we were seeing so many complaints from FCP projects about a lack of communication from the operator, although this is not a new issue for the programme. But Openreach said the suspension of their programme in Great Britain would only be “temporary,” while they worked through the backlog of current requests.
Advertisement
At the time, the operator indicated to ISPreview that they hoped to be able to re-open it for new registrations from sometime “later this year,” but this has now slipped into the New Year.
An Openreach spokesperson ISPreview.co.uk:
“Our Fibre Community Partnership scheme has proven extremely popular and in recent months we temporarily paused new registrations – to help us work through current requests. We’re making good progress and aim to re-open the doors to new registrations – focusing on communities who need our help the most and are eligible for the Government’s voucher scheme – early in the New Year.
In the meantime, those interested in signing up can continue to register their interest in Ultrafast Full Fibre by entering their details in our checker on our website here. We’ll keep people up to date on build progress in their area, and let them know as and when we resume registrations in their community.”
We should point out that delays in FCPs can also be caused or exacerbated by other issues, such as a lack of resources in the Government’s (DCMS) Building Digital UK team (i.e. taking longer to approve vouchers) and the disruption caused by Project Gigabit’s ongoing market reviews (necessary to avoid vouchers and gap-funded contracts overbuilding). At the same time, we’re continuing to hear gripes about a lack of communication on existing projects.
At this point, it’s worth noting that the Government are expected to increase the value of their Gigabit Broadband Vouchers next month (here), which is something that Openreach will no doubt want to harness. But the operator is taking the correct approach by ensuring that they have the necessary resources spare to deliver for the backlog of existing projects first.
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, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
« UK ISP Zen Internet Tries to Resolve Network Performance Issue UPDATE
EE UK Leave Kent Village Without Mobile Signal for Two Weeks »
exasperated adjective
having or showing strong feelings of irritation or annoyance
e.g. an exasperated sigh
exacerbate verb
to make more violent, bitter, or severe
e.g. The new law only exacerbates the problem
Thanks for spotting 🙂
You could be exasperated by the exacerbated situation?
If you ever have to deal with OR directly the processes are very likely to exacerbate exasperation!
Very surprised at the suggestion that the partnerships support projects in “disadvantaged” areas. This is not strictly true. It’s aimed at areas which are outside those parts of the country where commercial roll-outs are proposed. In a local case near me, a hamlet of 30 houses where the house price averages £600,000 minimum has just had such a scheme implemented. This rural idyll is hardly disadvantaged by most people’s definitions. Indeed, two other very affluent areas within 10 miles also have such schemes up and running. Perhaps it has more to do with residents there wanting to work from home and having the wherewithal to get the funding.
“It’s aimed at areas which are outside those parts of the country where commercial roll-outs are proposed. ” Thus disadvantaged by comparison with areas covered by commercial or subsidised coverage.
To use your own words ‘most peoples definition’ doesn’t equate to that definition being correct.
@Carl Conrad
Why do you keep banging on about this “working from home super privileged” rhetoric? Are you jealous or just not that bright (or both)?
I am sure SOME of those people are more affluent people who want to work from a nice home and have loads of money. I also bet more of those people grew up in the area, have inherited the property or have lived in it for years long before prices rose and have no option but to stay there.
Your tired attacks on anyone you think are privileged are as boring as they are misguided at this point. It’s NOT those who have lived in a rural setting all their lives’ fault that house prices in their locale have gone through the roof. It’s not their fault all their work, family and friends are also in that area. What you’re suggesting is that ALL people who live rurally are affluent and privileged. Even typing it makes me chuckle on how stupid and provably wrong a statement that is.
What you’re then suggesting is that NO ONE in ANY rural setting should have their installs subsidised because there happen to be affluent people living near them. Ad hominem arguments are never good but in this case I’ll make an exception, you’re an idiot.
My dad has a nice house that he could afford to buy back when. He couldn’t afford to buy it now.
He hasn’t done anything other than own it since 1982 and pay his bills.
How is that his fault? Or how do you ‘blame’ him for spending just under £30k buying a house back then?
As other posters have opined there are loads of people living in nice houses they couldn’t hope to buy now because they were left them or because they bought them when prices were vaguely sane.
Or would your prefer some kind of social cleansing of the original population so he community was properly destroyed? Because that is what happens if all the original residents have to sell up.
My Openreach rural gigabit project is now 22 months in, 10 months past its contractual 1 year completion date.During that time there hasn’t been a single proactive communication from openreach, and there is still no given completion date. Complete joke
interesting which community was that and did you get your prp approved
Yes, approval was all fine. In fact right now as far as I am able to tell all the physical work has been done and was completed 6 weeks ago. Everyone now has fibre running up the telegraph poles. But radio silence from openreach
will be really interesting to see how openreach actually validate and check any registrations against current / future plans and and also against other registrations in the same locality registered independently or as previously they just process everything independently of everything else
From experience, they don’t. Signing up on ORs site does not link your details to any local FCP/CFP campaigns going on, even if those campaigns are actively engaging with OR. The OR site seems to be there simply to help them decide if any areas are worth a commercial deployment.