Sheffield UK Estate Pilots Free Full Fibre Broadband to Fight Poverty
Some 360 homes on the Dryden Estate in Southey Green, which is known as being one of Sheffield’s (South Yorkshire) most disadvantaged areas, are now starting to be connected to a “free” full fibre (FTTP) broadband ISP network in order to test a new approach to tackling digital poverty.
The non-profit Dryden project, which is being partly supported by a Sheffield City Council awarded Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) grant of £72,000 (the rest comes from other partners), was first mentioned on this site in the summer – after network provider Pine Media began using the deployment as a platform to help train new engineers from the local community (here). But at the time, the details were still quite vague.
The project is being led by a local charity – the David and Jane Richards Family Foundation – and the youth and community services provider SY-NC (Sheffield Youth Neighbourhoods and Communities), with other supporters including WANdisco, the Digital Poverty Alliance, Northern Powerhouse Partnership, UK ISP Pine Media, Sheffield Churches Council for Community Care, Sheffield City Council and the University of Sheffield.
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Fast-forward to today and Pine Media’s new Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network – a closed service that is only available to those on the estate – is now ready to start connecting its first homes, which according to local reports (here and here) will be unique in that residents will be able to access the service for “free” during the initial 1-year pilot. But it’s stated that the pilot could continue to offer a free service for at least 3 years.
Cllr Richard Williams, Chair of the Communities Committee, said:
“This initiative has come at the right time, with many people struggling to pay for food and fuel and other essential items. The internet is so important to all of us and should be accessible to everyone. I hope that this community-led project is a success and that residents will see long-term benefits from this improved connectivity.”
The first year of the new pilot will be crucial because this will be monitored closely by researchers at the University of Sheffield, and the outcome of that could decide whether the scheme can be rolled out to other estates across the UK.
But at the time of writing, little is known about the “free” service itself, such as what speeds residents can expect and whether there will be any caveats / usage restrictions involved or upsell options. We’ve put the “free” claim in brackets too because some reports from earlier this year contradicted that and suggested a “small nominal fee” would be involved, which was to be decided by the residents (an odd approach as people usually pick the cheapest).
We should point out that people in disadvantaged groups across the UK, such as those on benefits, already have access to a growing list of alternative low-cost Social Broadband Tariffs from various ISPs. Such packages tend to offer “superfast” (30Mbps+) speeds from around just £10-£15 per month.
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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.
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While I’m all for helping the disadvantaged, I don’t see how offering them free broadband will help.
There’s a lot more areas in which FTTP providers could assist the economy and that is focusing on getting the coverage to 100% of the country as quickly as possible. The levelling up across of broadband network is nothing short of shambolic at present, and I just wish the DCMS would actually regulate FTTP rollouts.
There’s no point in 4 providers all building in the same place and fighting for a small slice of pie, when there is enough to go around.
According to Think Broadband earlier this month coverage was 43.06% of the UK with 6.46% of the country having access to multiple networks.
Attempting to force companies to build where DCMS want them to will result in a taxpayer subsidised/protected monopoly and won’t get your area covered any quicker. Quite the opposite, actually. Without the threat of overbuild companies building would go much more slowly.
Where we are is fine for now. Lots of private money going into FTTP and coverage rising quickly without much taxpayer funding.
For folks stuck with unacceptable speeds Starlink is an option. Beyond that it’ll reach almost everywhere eventually but no private entity is going to make a beeline for those premises costing £3,000 and up each when they could get even a small slice of a £300 per premises passed pie regardless of how much DCMS try and regulate. They’ll just stop building until the taxpayer funds them.
XGS – You’re missing the point. You’ve got areas of the UK, semi rural where rollouts are sporadic and Alt-nets are having to pick up the slack because OR doesn’t want to install to these places. Which in my opinion isn’t on!
You see large towns with 4 or 5 alt nets and Openreach/VM02, yet 3 miles down the road some of the medium to large villages are left isolated on old copper networks until someone decides to infill.
My village has all the fibre spines in place as the new estates being built are going on to the OFNL network, yet OR won’t actually think, hang on, we’ve dug the road up to install this fibre spine work, why don’t we actually roll out FTTP while we are here. It’s extremely poor planning on the OR side of things. Instead our FTTP rollout has been moved from the 2021-2026 window to under review for install between 2025 and 2030.
I personally don’t really want to be waiting 5 more years for FTTP, yet I won’t pay the huge fees OR want to install FTTPoD and I can’t use Starlink as it’s not good for my core usage. The villages are full of young families nowadays and not the over 55’s that OR believe it is. Doesn’t matter how many attempts to get a Community Fibre project off the ground OR and BT have ZERO interest until they are ready to do something.
@pipedream
OR internally are actually looking to reduce thier fttp build spend per premise even further. In my view you’ll probably not get anything until project gigabit gives BT money to do it.
Best shout would be to get an altnet to commit publicly to do your area, openreach will be out installing fttp the very next day 🙂
An Alt-net has publicly come out and said they are coming to our villages, after it was pointed out that OR had installed to every other village around ours and OR just shrugged and pushed their build dates backwards.
OR historically have avoided our villages for some reason, only when someone else has paid them to install have they installed/upgraded infastructure, however the population and it’s requirements are now completely different to the FTTC roll out.
75% of the villagers are now work from home all/part of the week.
40% of the villagers have teenage children.
85% of the villagers use at least one streaming service.
All of this is trying to cope on old copper network with max speeds of 60-80Mbps. I’ve had to take out 2 lines to allow our household to function properly, where as FTTP would resolve all the problems of the village in one swoop.
If altnets are picking up the slack the market is working. Openreach can’t and won’t do everywhere at once so if an altnet is coming all good.
Just FYI the spine fibre almost certainly belongs to OFNL if it was installed recently, OFNL contractors potentially repaired the Openreach infrastructure as operators do using Physical Infastructure Access and, regardless, it’s a relatively small part of the overall costs.
Even if it is Openreach fibre it is unlikely to be anything more than a cable going to the development. None of the other infrastructure or a high enough fibre count cable to deliver to the village.
Openreach are a business. You’re a captive audience right now all paying line rental / FTTC. Not a lot of additional income in it for them providing FTTP, potentially high costs, so no business case.
“Free”
If the council is paying then it is most definitely not free, it is just stolen from someone else’s pocket
You’re being absurdly reductionist.
No, it is that simple. Where do you think councils get their money?
Cool, just in time for Christmas so they can switch their Sky package to Sky Stream UHD in every room.
That’s actually hilariously accurate
Iwas brought up in S5 of Sheffield in the 1950/ 60 era.Having no money no help from anywhere. Parents on the housing list for my decades.Unable to get financial help and no benefits.
But with determination harder work and community spirit most made a bettering life for themselve
So why are we wet nursing those who won’t help themselves.