131,000 Premises to Benefit from New Project Gigabit Broadband Contracts UPDATE

The UK Government and Openreach (BT) have today confirmed their latest four UK contract awards – valued at £289m+ – under the Project Gigabit broadband roll-out scheme, which we leaked last week (here). Some 131,000 premises in rural parts of North and Southwest Wales, Shropshire, Herefordshire, Devon, Somerset, Essex, North East England and Worcestershire will benefit.

Just to recap. The development forms part of Openreach’s earlier Single Supplier Framework agreement (here), which saw them being chosen to deliver all of Project Gigabit’s Cross-Regional (Type C) procurements – reflecting “up to” £800m in total state aid to help upgrade 312,000 premises in rural areas of England, Scotland and Wales (the previous Type A [local] and Type B [regional] contracts have all gone to smaller providers).

However, until recently the Government had only awarded the first two Call-Off contracts for this, which covered various parts of Lancashire, North Wiltshire and South Gloucestershire, West and Mid-Surrey, Staffordshire, West Berkshire. Hertfordshire, Devon and Wales. Both of those contracts – worth a combined £288m – aimed to connect c. 96,600 premises in poorly served areas to the operator’s new full fibre (FTTP) network.

Today’s official announcement adds four additional Type C contracts to Openreach’s belt (see below), reflecting a total public investment of more than £289m and an aim to reach a further 131,000 premises. This means that, across all six Type C contracts awarded since August 2024, a total of around £577m in public investment has been allocated to reach a further 228,000 premises. This leaves one Type C contract, for Scotland, yet to be awarded (due April 2025).

Openreach’s Type C Project Gigabit Contract Awards (Jan 2025)

Type C (Call Off 3): East and South Shropshire, North Herefordshire, North Wales, and South West Wales
Premises: 47,000
Final Value: £108.94m

Type C (Call Off 4): Mid Devon, North Somerset, and South Devon
Premises: 37,000
Final Value: £77.05m

Type C (Call Off 5): Essex and North East England
Premises: 24,000
Final Value: £61.31m

Type C (Call Off 7): Worcestershire
Premises: 22,000
Final Value: £41.92m

NOTE: The above contracts were all formally awarded on 18th December 2024, but the official press release has only come out today.

The areas covered by the new Type C contracts typically reflect locations where no or no appropriate market interest had previously been expressed before to the Government’s Building Digital UK (BDUK) agency, or areas that have been descoped or terminated from a prior procurement (i.e. there was a lack of market interest in upgrading them). Such areas are often skipped due to being too expensive (difficult) for smaller suppliers to tackle.

Openreach CEO, Clive Selley, said:

“Our new Full Fibre broadband network now reaches more than half of all properties in the UK, and we’re confident we can reach as many as 30 million premises by the end of the decade, assuming the right regulatory and investment conditions exist. This is a British infrastructure success story which experts say will boost productivity by £73 billion and bring a raft of social and environmental benefits for the country.

We believe that everyone deserves access to fast and reliable broadband, and we’re proud that this partnership will help extend our ultrafast, ultra-reliable network to areas that would otherwise be left behind by the private sector.”

Technology Secretary, Peter Kyle MP, said:

“We are determined to deliver the infrastructure this country needs to thrive, and I am thrilled to see so many homes and businesses in all areas of the country getting access to the fastest broadband speeds on the market through Project Gigabit.

With today’s £289 million investment, we are not only boosting connectivity, but making it easier to access remote healthcare, online education, shopping online. work, learn, shop and stay in touch with loved ones online.

As part of this Government’s Plan for Change, we will plug digital divides, helping to make the UK a more equal society where everyone is given a fair shot in life.”

Take note that Openreach have previously confirmed that “selected” Type C areas would also be the first in the UK to gain access to their forthcoming 1Gbps symmetric speed FTTP package from April 2025 (here). But the exact details of which locations will benefit from this and how much those tiers will cost have yet to be revealed (the initial launch is expected to be quite limited).

The new service, once live, can be ordered via various ISPs, such as BT, Sky Broadband, TalkTalk, Vodafone and more (Openreach FTTP ISP Choices) – it is not currently an automatic upgrade, although some providers have started to do free automatic upgrades as older copper-based services and lines are slowly withdrawn.

As for Project Gigabit itself, it is now in the process of delivering gigabit broadband connectivity to over 1.1 million hard-to-reach premises. Dozens of related Type A, B and C contracts – representing more than £2.2 billion of public investment – have now been signed with over 10 different suppliers to deliver the upgrades, including many smaller, independent broadband providers. But it will take several years to complete these deployments, and they won’t cover 100% of premises in every single location they reach.

UPDATE 8th Jan 2025 @ 4:12pm

We’ve updated the contract list above with the final premises count. Below is a list of maps of the areas due to be upgraded in the first six awarded call-offs, although these are quite vague. Please note the premises to be reached by these contracts are subject to change following further market research, which may indicate that a connection has already been provided by another provider, or through extraordinary engineering difficulties during the lifetime.

• North Wiltshire and South Gloucestershire
• Hertfordshire
• West and Mid Surrey
• Staffordshire
• West Berkshire
• Lancashire
• South East Wales 
• North West and Mid Wales
• West and North Devon
• North Herefordshire
• Shropshire
• South West Wales
• North Wales
• South, Mid Devon and North Somerset
• Essex
• North East
• Worcestershire