85,504 Premises in N.Ireland Need Help to Get Gigabit Broadband

The Building Digital UK agency and Department for the Economy (DfE) have published a new Public Review (PR) consultation for Northern Ireland, which reveals that some 85,504 premises might need state aid help under the £5bn Project Gigabit broadband rollout scheme in order to access 1Gbps speeds.

The project, which is targeted at upgrading areas in the final 20% of the UK (5-6 million premises) where commercial investment models tend to fail, seeks to ensure that a minimum of 85%+ of UK premises can access a gigabit-capable broadband ISP connection by the end of 2025, before possibly reaching “nationwide” coverage (realistically c.99%) by the end of 2030 (here and here).

However, the first step – before procurements can begin and contracts be awarded to suppliers – is to identify precisely which areas are not expected to benefit from gigabit speeds under existing commercial projects, which covers related plans for the next 3 years. This is known as an Open Market Review (OMR). Only once you have the answer to that, can you identify where public funding will be needed to help address market failure.

In Northern Ireland, the current coverage for gigabit-capable broadband stands at an already impressive level of 90%, thanks to both commercial projects (e.g. Openreach, Fibrus, Virgin Media [VMO2] and Netomnia) and the £197m state aid supported Project Stratum scheme (working to extend full fibre FTTP to 85,000 extra premises by March 2025).

The most recent OMR (part of the UK’s national rolling market review) for N.Ireland was conducted in September 2022 and thus took account of all those plans. According to the outcome of that – “planned commercial coverage for gigabit-capable broadband would reach approximately 879,605 premises, and would therefore leave the remaining 85,504 premises in [NI] without access to gigabit-capable broadband.”

Now we do just need to clarify the 85,504 figure a bit because, digging deeper, it is made up of 50,745 “Gigabit White” and 34,759 “Under Review” premises. Gigabit white premises are the only ones that can, at this stage, benefit from a public subsidy because those will not be covered by any commercial builds. But Under Review premises are those where commercial plans may exist, but they’ve been judged to be at risk of not being completed. So for now, the real figure is about 51k.

Both BDUK and the DfE have now launched the final PR phase before procurement can begin, which aims to validate the outcome of the earlier OMR. In addition, any suppliers (network builders) that failed or were not yet ready with their plans to respond to the earlier OMR phase can respond via the final PR phase in order to be included. This is important because the market is rapidly evolving, with new networks and deployment plans often being in a constant state of flux.

The new PR for N.Ireland will be open for industry / supplier responses until 6th July 2023. Hopefully, once this has completed, we’ll get a better idea of how much funding will be directed from Project Gigabit to help NI close the remaining coverage gap. Not to mention answering the question of when the related contracts might finally be awarded (we fear it could take until 2025 just to reach that stage).

N.Ireland Public Review for Project Gigabit
https://www.gov.uk/../northern-ireland-project-gigabit-public-review-request-for-information