Building Digital UK Agency Publish Corporate Plan for 2023 to 2026
The Government’s Building Digital UK (BDUK) agency, which oversees various gigabit-capable broadband and mobile network (4G, 5G etc.) deployment projects, has today published their corporate Plan for 2023 to 2026 – this sets out their latest key progress, targets and objectives for the next three years.
The plan itself doesn’t say anything that we haven’t already reported on before in one article or another (example), but it does provide a useful centralised summary of their current progress. On top of that, it also offers an update on how much they expect to get done between now and 2026.
For example, in terms of the Government’s £5bn rural Project Gigabit progress, BDUK reports that they’ve updated their delivery assumptions in light of evidence from early projects, including contract milestone data from the first procurements. “Based on suppliers’ build plans, we have revised our delivery profile to model 100,000 fewer premises passed in 2023 to 2024 and 135,000 more in 2025“, said the plan.
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Some changes are also due to the continued strong performance of the market, with commercial coverage reaching further than previously expected. As a result, and in order to protect value for money, BDUK’s state aid-based interventions tend to now be set to cover fewer premises than they forecast a year ago. Indeed, they’ve so far committed to delivering gigabit-capable connectivity to 1.56 million premises by the end of 2025.
Just for some context. BDUK recently reported (Summer 2023 Update) that the combined value of all the subsidy contracts signed so far comes to around £589m in public investment and will upgrade 378,450 premises (c.£1,557 per premises passed). But the total value of all the Project Gigabit procurements launched to date (inc. those that have yet to be awarded) is around £1.4bn, which could see up to 895,000 extra premises being passed by a gigabit-capable network (note: major procurements for Wales, Scotland and N.Ireland etc. have yet to be awarded, so this figure can only grow).
The government has so far only released £1.2bn of the £5bn budget committed to the project until the end of 2024, thus we can definitely expect to see the release of more funding in the future in order to reach that 1.56m target, as well as to go beyond it post-2025. Check out more details in the full plan.
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BDUK’s Corporate Plan 2023 to 2026
https://www.gov.uk/../bduk-corporate-plan-2023-to-2026
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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I see there’s no commentary on how far behind they are, the Summer update of project gigabit was still listing estimated contract award dates of April & yet we’re still no further forward. I think the big issue here is that while they expect larger quantities of premises to be completed by commercial build however they not factored in the fact the commercial companies are happy to express an interest in an area however but once site surveys have been completed if they deem it to be uneconomically viable then 3 years down the line you’re back to square one.
Yup. If you’re Direct In Ground (or some other problem) and get passed over during a regional BTOR rollout (or altnet rollout), then BDUK just aren’t interested. If a commercial provider is in your area but passes you by, as far as BDUK are concerned you aren’t their problem. Instead, you need to plead with the commercial provider to come back.
Which means you get nothing. Possibly, ever.
Previous responses have been to “Get your wallet out and pay for it yourself.” That’s great, until the quoted costs are £36k. Nobody can afford that.
Why arent the networks made to pay for this out of their pockets instead of tax payers?
…because, dear sir, if they did it commercially, then remote properties would either never get a high speed connection, or wait many years for it, or be paying typically 3 times as much for a connection as those customers in easily served areas.
We use cross subsidy (or government subsidy) for rural roads, railways, electricity, gas, water sewerage, even BT copper lines. There’s nothing unusual about the use of subsidy for rural and hard to serve infrastructure, other than the complication that in telecoms it’s done universally through privately owned assets and multiple physical providers. You might argue that it’s being mishandled, and few will disagree with you, but as a principle this is the norm in the UK and most developed nations.