North Yorkshire UK Seeks Faster Broadband Fix for 11,000 Premises

The North Yorkshire Council (NYC) has called on the UK government to help it find funding and solutions for the remaining 11,000 properties in the county that, once existing roll-outs of gigabit-capable broadband ISP networks have completed, will likely still be left without access to “decent internet connections“.

The original state-aid backed Superfast North Yorkshire (SFNY) project, which was supported by £100m of investment (£85m from public sources) and completed a few months ago (here), previously helped more than 200,000 extra premises to access faster broadband speeds via a mix of different technologies (FTTC, FTTP, Fixed Wireless etc.) and operators (Openreach and Quickline).

Since then Quickline has scooped up the £73.5m (state aid) Project Gigabit broadband roll-out contract for North Yorkshire (Lot 31), which over the next few years will aim to extend their 10Gbps capable full fibre (FTTP) network to reach an additional 36,300 premises in hard-to-reach (usually rural) parts of the county. Quickline also intends to use their own complementary commercial deployment to push beyond that contracted figure.

However, despite the progress, the NYC has warned that the current projections suggest that around 11,000 premises in the county will still be left without access to “decent internet connections” (they don’t define this). At present over 95% of premises in the county can access speeds of 30Mbps+ and more than 75% can get a gigabit (1000Mbps+) broadband service, most of which have been delivered via commercial deployments.

Carl Les, Council Leader and NYnet Board Member, said:

“A great deal of work has been undertaken in recent years to ensure that there are far better connections for tens of thousands of people in North Yorkshire.

I would urge the Government to build on the work that has been already undertaken by ourselves here in the county and make sure that every home and business has access to superfast broadband connections.

We cannot have a technology divide between our urban and rural areas, which means you are disadvantaged simply by where you live for decent access to the internet.”

For its part the government’s Project Gigabit programme still has around £2bn left to be committed over the next few years. But a good chunk of that will no doubt go toward future build contracts for other parts of the UK (i.e. mostly Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, with a few remaining bits of England also in the procurement pipeline), which should still leave a fair bit for allocation under a future phase of the programme.

The government are otherwise still pondering over the best approach for what remains, which will be difficult as the cost per premises passed rises disproportionately as you look toward ever more remote, sparse and thus challenging rural communities. This is why Project Gigabit’s coverage goal is usually expressed as “nationwide” or c.99% of premises by 2030, since those in the final sub-1% are often too expensive to reach via fixed lines (i.e. tiny communities can cost hundreds of thousands or even a few million pounds to serve).

The expectation is that those who living in the most challenging “Very Hard to Reach Areas” may require a more diverse mix of solutions involving fixed wireless, mobile (4G, 5G, 6G), satellites and some fibre optic lines. But precisely what approach the government will take is still the subject of much speculation, and this is only going to grow as more local authorities reach the same stage as North Yorkshire.

However, we should add that commercial deployments, such as with respect to Openreach’s future plans to reach up to 30 million premises with FTTP by 2030, could still have a positive impact in helping to bring down North Yorkshire’s 11,000 premises figure. But it’s too early to know how much of an impact, as they haven’t yet released the build plan for that phase.