Worcestershire UK Council Target 90% Gigabit Broadband by 2027
The Worcestershire County Council (WCC) in England has committed to help ensure that 90% of premises across the county will be able to access a gigabit-capable broadband ISP network by 2027, which will be partly funded via clawback (gainshare) from their earlier rollout programme with Openreach (Superfast Worcestershire).
Just to recap. The original Superfast Worcestershire project worked with Openreach (BT) to help extend “superfast broadband” (30Mbps+) networks (FTTC, FTTP etc.) out to reach 98% of the county. Mostly due to a mix of different state aid supported build contracts and voucher schemes (75,000 extra premises were reached via this).
The contracts under the aforementioned project – based on a framework from the government’s Building Digital UK (BDUK) programme – also included a standard clawback clause, which requires BT to return some of the public investment as their build achieves higher levels of take-up by consumers. The latest announcement suggests that the council may still have some clawback left to reinvest, but they aren’t specific.
Advertisement
In fact, aside from setting the 90% target for gigabit coverage, the council’s update is extremely light on detail. But going forward, the local authority does plan to liaise with ISPs to assist with their commercial deployments, such as by “making Worcestershire an easier place to invest“. Work will also progress to understand the current position of mobile connectivity within Worcestershire to improve the experience of residents and businesses.
Councillor Marc Bayliss said:
“This reconfirms our ongoing commitment to improve digital infrastructure and connectivity within Worcestershire. We have raised our ambitions from enabling ‘Superfast’ speeds to ‘Gigabit capable’ speeds and further improving the experience of mobile phone users within Worcestershire.
Digital connectivity has never been more important for our communities. It remains a critical enabler to meet many of today’s key challenges such as improving our economy, supporting growth and enhancing overall quality of life. Speedy and stable internet connections can no longer be considered a luxury; it is now a basic necessity.”
Interestingly, the council’s announcement makes no mention of the fact that the UK Government’s centrally managed £5bn Project Gigabit broadband rollout scheme will most likely now be doing most of the heavily lifting – local authorities have significantly less control over the delivery side of this.
Project Gigabit aims to extend networks capable of delivering 1000Mbps (1Gbps) download speeds to “at least” 85% of UK premises by the end of 2025 and then “nationwide” coverage (c.99%) by around 2030 (here) – focusing upon rural areas. In other words, setting a target of 90% by 2027 for Worcestershire would appear to be roughly aligned with that goal.
Speaking of Project Gigabit, a recent Open Market Review (OMR) of gigabit coverage in the county, which examined commercial deployment plans for the next 3 years, found that 43,480 premises would be left without access to gigabit-capable broadband. A further 89,052 premises were also listed as ‘Under Review‘ for gigabit coverage (i.e. premises where suppliers have reported planned commercial broadband coverage, but where those plans have been judged through the OMR as potentially being at risk of not being completed).
Advertisement
Just to put all of this into some final context. Project Gigabit is currently in procurement for a delivery contract in Worcestershire (LOT 24), which is valued at £39.4 million (indicative) and will aim to help upgrade a further 18,460 premises to gigabit-capable connectivity. The contract for this is hoped to be awarded within the July to September 2023 window.
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.
« Starlink Testing Next Gen LEO Satellite Broadband Dishes
Good overview for WCC, cheers.
There’s a stark divide in FTTP access in Worcestershire, between rural and urban areas.
Full Fibre Ltd (Fibre Heroes) is going to rollout their FTTP network in my town in the next 3-6 months, as far as I know, the council wasn’t involved in this decision.
I thought Worcestershire or Worcester at least would have good Fibre coverage, Just seems to be a place that would.
Cityfibre are starting to install around Worcester. From colleagues in the area it seems its lagging behind some other areas.
Can you point me to where the 97% target is stated? Seems ambitious! Looking at their corporate plan it says they have a 90% Gigabit Capable by 2027 target.
I think in terms of Gigabit Capable plans, the ‘how’ can’t really have a lot of detail at this stage. I’d expect they need to see what the gaps really look like as commercial deployments progress and what the BDUK preferred suppliers indicates they will reach. Guessing the very hard to reach will be in the hands of councils and BDUK and maybe commercial operators to plan for as things mature???
I fear for this council and others that BDUKs approach has a huge cost of delay attached to it and that many of the gaps can’t currently be funded by state intervention.
Thank you for picking up the article. The 90% Gigabit Capable Target during 2027 is correct, the 97% in the headline would appear to be a typo somewhere along the line.
It is right the BDUK National investment in Gigabit Capable Broadband and the commercial deployments will go a long way to improving Gigabit Capable Broadband in the county in the coming years. The commitment from Worcestershire is to support and work with these investments to ensure we get as much coverage in the county as possible. However we recognise that we may need to invest further if we are to support the hardest to reach communities and what we believe will be infill areas due to technological or operational issues.
There are more than 10 commercial operators either already deploying or with plans to deploy full fibre networks in the county, mainly in the city our towns and larger villages.
As another reader has suggested, to announce detail of how this will be achieved would be premature at this stage, it may be a range of different interventions, but until we understand the size and scale of the gap we cannot and should not be specific.
Worcestershire has invested Gainshare previously, directly into contracts to take coverage further, working with communities on Local Broadband Schemes and then through supporting and topping up the DCMS voucher schemes. There are still some existing voucher schemes that are yet to complete and when the national voucher scheme is un-paused in Worcestershire we expect there to be new ones started.
We also announced a desire to understand and support improvements to the mobile phone infrastructure and user experience in the county.
Worcestershire County Council let residents down when they refused to allow Gigaclear to deploy their FTTP network in parts of Worcestershire in 2017 onwards.
The reason was apparently due to a lack of permission for wayleave (roadworks) from the council.
Can we have the council’s assurance that they will not block any future FTTP deployments, from commercial deployments or from the UK government’s Project Gigabit?
Also, is there a strategy to focus on FTTP deployments, or is the council going to focus on any connections that meet the Gigabit criteria?
For clarity, Worcestershire County Council did not refuse Gigaclear permission to work in the county in 2017. Worcestershire County Council’s Connectivity and Highways teams were disappointed with Gigaclear’s decision to withdraw from Worcestershire. Our teams had been working closely with Gigaclear at the time, we believe Gigaclear’s decision coincided with them securing a large number of BDUK contracts elsewhere in the UK (for which they had contractual targets to try and meet and a contribution to their funding), a change in their build methodology/business model and, a shift from predominantly direct bury towards ducting and blown fibre, which along with the Highways matters, is also expected to have influenced their decision.
WCC worked with BDUK and Openreach to ensure communities left in a difficult position by the withdrawal in c.2017, were still eligible for public subsidy; with some communities being the first to benefit from the BDUK voucher schemes and WCC’s initial broadband reinvestments.
WCC will not block any operator from deploying in the county, but as mentioned above will try to work with network builders and their agents to understand challenges faced but will make sure all works meet the requirements of Worcestershire Highways in terms of safe working practices and the ongoing structural integrity of the Highway.
Gigaclear are back working in Worcestershire and are a critical part of the commercial footprint to serve rural and semi-rural communities, including towns such as Broadway. Worcestershire County Council remains very committed to bringing gigabit infrastructure to towns and villages, as well as, the hardest to reach areas across the county, we are currently working with more than 10 operators on their commercial deployments at present.
It is up to the operator to determine the technology they use to connect premises. FTTP seems to be the preferred route for most and if companies are seeking BDUK support the solution must meet BDUKs requirements/assurance. Whilst we fully support FTTP and other Gigabit Capable solutions, there is also a small number of premises that remain on less than 30 Mbps, some on less than 10Mbps download and for some FTTP or Gigabit capable may not reach them for some time if at all. My view is different technologies will be required as part of the solution and a step change for these types of premises, at least in the short term, perhaps even long term, may be better than waiting for Gigabit / FTTP to arrive.
Thankyou for the detailed response.
I’d just like to reply to this part:
“WCC will not block any operator from deploying in the county, but as mentioned above will try to work with network builders and their agents to understand challenges faced but will make sure all works meet the requirements of Worcestershire Highways in terms of safe working practices and the ongoing structural integrity of the Highway”.
It’s worth pointing out that Worcestershire Highways is managed by Worcestershire County Council, so in effect, the council can determine the requirements for Worcestershire Highways.
Some councils have more lenient /flexible rules than others, when it comes to highway maintenance and roadworks.
Also, if commercial deployments (FTTP or other technologies) cannot meet the requirements of Worcestershire Highways (for example, plans are not determined to be commercially viable, due to issues like granting Wayleave), it sounds like the most likely outcome would still be that these operators would not be given permission to proceed.