Openreach Slowly Nears Completion of Devon and Somerset FTTP Contract
The state aid supported Connecting Devon and Somerset (CDS) programme in England has today issued a progress update on their £6m Fibre Extension Programme (FEP) contract with Openreach (BT), which was originally due to cover 2,000 rural premises with Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband by the end of 2021.
The contract, which mostly harnesses public investment that was returned by operators as a result of high take-up under earlier contracts (gainshare / clawback), was first reveal all the way back in July 2020 (here). As part of that, Openreach agreed to extend their gigabit-capable full fibre broadband ISP network to cover another 2,000 premises in rural areas by the end of 2021 (later slightly extended to reach a further 100 homes).
According to today’s update, the operator has now reached “more than” 1,800 of the contracted premises (up from around 1,500 a year ago). Full Fibre is thus now ready for service for around 550 homes and businesses in parts of Dulverton and the surrounding area, more than 420 premises in the area south of Tiverton, just over 100 premises in the parish of Bickleigh and Wotter, over 80 in Kentibury Ford, more than 80 in Widecombe-in-the-Moor and more than 70 in East Blue Anchor. Other areas included in the build which also have access to live connectivity are parts of Coffinswell, Combeinteignhead, Lane End, Satterleigh and Watermouth.
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However, the build remains ongoing in a number of areas, including parts of Combe Martin, Dulverton, Lydeard St Lawrence, Shaugh Prior, South Molton, Washford and Wiveliscombe.
Rob Hanrahan, Specialist Technical Fibre Manager for Openreach, said:
“We’ve been working closely with CDS to roll out fibre to deeply rural parts of Devon and Somerset. Bickleigh was a unique case because of its remote location. Building a new spine would have been cost-prohibitive, so we used Subtended Headends to make the build possible. A SHE is like a mini-exchange; it avoids the need for disruptive traffic management and it’s more cost-effective. Considering how difficult the build is, everything’s gone really well.”
Sadly, long-delays to completion targets do seem to be a fairly common feature of many current and past CDS projects, so we perhaps shouldn’t be too surprised that this one is taking a long time to finish either. The example of Bickleigh in Mid-Devon is a good one for highlighting some of the challenges involved.
In order to provide FTTP to around 300 premises in the community, Openreach engineers had to ensure their build crossed the historic Grade Two listed Bickleigh Bridge. The site is busy with traffic and is prone to flooding, which are just two of the many obstacles their teams have faced in recent months. There’s even a video..
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 and Linkedin.
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The £6M Gainshare contract with Openreach was agreed and announced in June 2019, the re announced in July 2020 with build underway
https://www.burnham-on-sea.com/news/take-up-of-superfast-broadband-services-in-somerset-increasing-says-council/
At £3k per prem passed and taking 4+ years to deliver, this is very questionable.
Building faster would cost more. If Openreach weren’t keeping to the contract I assume there would be ramifications.
We’re all going to have to get used to seeing £2k+ per prem on these builds. Some of these are going to have astronomical costs per premises. I fully imagine builds hitting £10k per prem.
@XGS
If you actually look at the areas being covered these are not particularly challenging – radius straight lines runs following rural roads…
The time issue, most of this was built within 6month and within 12-18months of surveyors on the ground, so in honesty if it’s taking them 2.5 years to plan, then delivering the actual deep rural prems will be a impossibility.
Why is it always Openreach that gets public money? Well, it seems that way.
Openreach is also contributing some funding toward the programme,
But they don’t say how much, strange that.
probably the worst example to whine about Openreach on, considering CDS pioneered the concept of “anyone but openreach” and repeatedly got burnt by it. A stark contrast to what happened in Cornwall.
as has been documented by our esteemed host:
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2019/09/devon-and-somerset-uk-scrap-gigaclear-fttp-broadband-contract.html
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2022/07/devon-and-somerset-uk-scrap-truespeed-fttp-broadband-contracts.html
Perhaps Openreach gets most of the public funding because it makes sense to give it to the company with the existing infrastructure and experience?
@Ivor, it gets funding because government have their fingers in the pie, that is the reason.
This country is so corrupted
Probably not. It gets funding because it’s a track record of delivering alongside existing contracts and other things such as existing infrastructure, cost and an old boys’ network.
In this case the funding is from clawback, and it makes sense for CDS to use Openreach rather than taking the money back from them, running another procurement and using another business. Openreach and the local authorities agreed terms where it made more sense for local authorities to use the gainshare for further Openreach build.
If you’ve evidence of corruption please do share it. Newspapers would likely pay a fair amount for it so you can make a few quid, too. If there were genuine corruption it would make far more sense to use a smaller business lacking the checks and balances that are likely in a publicly listed business like BT Group.
gainshare a specific amount agreed by contract based on the gaining a specific take up so what that will be being spent
@Ivor Cornwall is hardly the poster child for good FTTP roll-outs.
Anywhere with direct in ground cabling in Cornwall is being passed over and that is that. No plans to revisit. Confirmed with BTOR complaints team that they aren’t coming back. If you are DIG and they skipped you, you’re not getting gigabit. So sorry!
I’ve contacted everyone I can, made complaints to everyone I can, and basically the response has been, “Wait and cross your fingers and maybe in future a unicorn will come and do your street.”
So yeah, Cornwall’s rollout was great until they hit the 75% to 85% figure, and the final 15% can just live without. Permanently. No plans for *anyone* to come back. The agreed upon level of subsidy is not enough to hit the last 15% and no further subsidy is available.
So those of us skipped over are officially all up sheet creek.
They’ve been coming back again and again where my parents are (VDSL area in a mostly FTTP village). The “too hard” (overhead but middle of nowhere) has steadily been upgraded (apparently outside of Superfast Cornwall, the postcodes aren’t on any lists) and now most of the exchange areas are listed for future build too, including theirs.
While directly buried cable is probably still on the “too hard for now” list, it’s not right to say they’ve stopped building anywhere in Cornwall.
@Ivor I’ve had it confirmed by both BTOR and Superfast Cornwall that our DIG street isn’t on any roadmap. No plans means no plans. BTOR said their decision was final for now, but they might (might) reassess the economics in 2027. No promises, tho, because it would all depend on the financials at the time.
BTOR sent a surveyor to accurately map the whole area, and then basically decided that it could never be economical for them.
They haven’t sugar-coated it, they’ve said, “Sorry, not happening, barring a future technological breakthrough.” If you have DIG cabling there is a very good chance that’s it, end of the road. I was advised by one surveyor to look into Starlink, because there was just zero chance of fibre being rolled out here.
We’re not even rural. We’re in the middle of a large town.
No comments. Army of Openreach workers on this website and defend their company.
Could be worse. People could be posting on news articles like these complaining about only having access to one FTTP network like they’re entitled to Openreach FTTP.
Some folks may even involve waste their MP’s time and call everyone who doesn’t share their view an employee of the company whose investment they feel entitled to.
I can manage being called an Openreach employee over behaving like a petulant, entitled child, so thank you for the description.
so what have you done to help your own community get fibre
His community already has fibre, however his side of the street was left out of the Openreach build due to cost and take up leaving him with Community Fibre and, potentially, Virgin Media.
I remember when people in rural areas were lucky to get basic internet access and now they seem to be the push to get FTTP first. I live in a major city in a home built 8 years ago and have been told it will be another 3 years before we get it in our “new house”
Happy for them but really wish new build residents could get it too.
We must be lucky… New build 2007… we now have 2 fttp providers on our estate…