Gov Prep Phase 2 of £5bn UK Project Gigabit Broadband Rollout

Planning is reportedly underway for the next phase of the UK Government’s £5bn rural Project Gigabit broadband rollout scheme, which would see more public funding from the existing commitment being set aside to help reach digitally disadvantaged premises (remote and urban) that the initial scheme has so far been unable to tackle.

On the off chance that our readers have forgotten what the programme was setup to do. Project Gigabit aims to help extend ISP networks capable of delivering 1000Mbps download speeds to “at least” 85% of UK premises by the end of 2025 and then “nationwide” coverage (c.99%) by around 2030 (here). Commercial deployments are actually expected to tackle the first 80%+ of premises, which leaves this project to focus on the final 20%.

So far only £1.2bn has been released from the budget for all this until around 2024-25, which is funding a mix of schemes, including gigabit vouchers (£210m), an extension of Dark Fibre (GigaHubs) around the public sector (£110m) and gap-funded deployments with suppliers (majority of the funding) – better known as the Gigabit Infrastructure Subsidy (GIS) programme.

However, the funding released so far only tackles part of the remaining connectivity gap, and the expectation has long been that the Building Digital UK (BDUK) agency, which oversees Project Gigabit, would ultimately make some changes ahead of the next tranche of funding being released in the future. This is similar to how the original ‘Superfast Broadband‘ (SFBB) programme had three delivery phases with different rules and targets.

What Next for Project Gigabit?

A new report on TelcoTitans states that BDUK has recently been holding internal discussions over a new scheme, tentatively called “The Fund“, which could combine aspects of Project Gigabit’s existing local and regional procurement contracts, and demand-side voucher programme. But exactly how this will work is still the subject of some debate.

However, it should be said that this is just one of several options that may be pursued, and indeed we’ve already seen some indications of the route that BDUK will be taking in the future for other areas. For example, we know that BDUK are currently starting to identify how many premises in urban areas might also need support (here), which is something that could potentially be tackled by expanding the remit of the existing voucher scheme.

Last year we also reported that BDUK were in the process of putting together a new £800m Cross-Regional Single Supplier Framework (aka – Type C), which is intended to target premises that have not been successful in attracting enough interest from suppliers under Project Gigabit’s regular GIS programme (here). A tender to find a supplier for this was published in January (here) and we already know the areas that have so far been shortlisted for it (tentative):

• North Wiltshire and South Gloucestershire (Lot 30C)
• West and Mid-Surrey (Lot 22C)
• Staffordshire (Lot 19C)
• West Berkshire (Lot 13C)
• Cornwall & Isles of Scilly (Lot 32C)
• Hertfordshire (Lot 26C)
• North West and Mid Wales (Lot 43C)
• West and North Devon (Lot 6C)

However, the catch with a “single supplier framework” is that there may only be very few operators that could tackle such a large commitment, which would tend to favour the likes of Openreach (BT), and not everybody is happy about that (here). On the other hand, if there are no other viable alternatives left at-scale, then the Type C approach may be the only option left for some areas.

Finally, the government (DSIT) has separately been making some progress on tackling those in the most extremely remote locations (final 0.3% of premises), which are often too expensive for even the main Project Gigabit programme to tackle. For example, there’s BT’s new rural broadband trial with OneWeb’s global network of ultrafast LEO satellites (here), as well as several separate trials with Starlink’s (SpaceX) standalone LEO constellation (here). But the funding for this aspect does NOT come from Project Gigabit as they’re sub-1Gbps solutions, and it is also not being delivered by the BDUK agency.

Suffice to say that the next phase of Project Gigabit will be a bit different from what we’ve seen before, and that’s more or less what we’d expect. An effective programme always needs to evolve and adapt as new challenges emerge, which is something that BDUK has always done.