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BDUK Publish Early Evaluation of Gigabit Broadband Subsidy Scheme

Monday, Jan 13th, 2025 (12:40 pm) - Score 1,200
Project-Gigabit-UK-Gov-Investment-Scheme-2025

The Government’s executive Building Digital UK (BDUK) agency and Ipsos UK have today published an “early process review” of the Gigabit Infrastructure Subsidy (GIS) programme under their £5bn Project Gigabit broadband roll-out scheme, which identifies what “worked well” and “less well” in terms of providing the GIS intervention to date.

Just to recap. Project Gigabit was designed to focus on improving connectivity for those in hard-to-reach (mostly rural) parts of the final 10-20% of UK premises. This primarily consisted of several support schemes, including gigabit vouchers (£210m), funding to extend Dark Fibre around the public sector and gap-funded deployments with suppliers (rest of the funding) – known as the Gigabit Infrastructure Subsidy (GIS) programme.

NOTE: Project Gigabit aims to help extend 1Gbps capable (download) broadband networks to reach “nationwide” UK coverage (c. 99%) by around 2030 (here) – the UK is currently at about the 86% coverage mark today (here). The focus of this scheme is on helping to upgrade those in the final 10-20% of hard-to-reach premises.

Unlike prior schemes that handed funding to local authorities, the GIS programme and related procurement work has been much more centralised under government control (at least in England and Wales), which sees suppliers (e.g. CityFibre, Wessex Internet, BT Group etc.) bidding through a Dynamic Purchasing System (DPS) to extend their networks across disadvantaged parts of the UK.

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As of November 2024, Project Gigabit had “over” 30 live gigabit broadband deployment contracts in place across England and Wales (here) – supporting planned deployments of gigabit-capable broadband to around 1 million premises. The new evaluation looks more at the process of how the GIS side of this project has functioned and “provides information on what has worked well and less well in terms of providing the GIS intervention to date“.

Broadly speaking, the early findings indicate that the “intervention appears to be operating effectively“, although it does note “some areas of concern around the change in the responsibilities of local bodies compared to the Superfast Broadband Programme, as well as around internal data across different interventions.” BDUK are currently also “trying to improve the quality of their internal data to help improve the accuracy of the OMR process” (i.e. the Open Market Review process is the mechanism that BDUK uses to identify future gigabit coverage over the next 3 years, which allows them to identify where public investment may be needed)

Conclusions of the Early Evaluation

The key findings and conclusions from the early process evaluation are presented below. Findings from a future impact evaluation will be needed to fully assess the effectiveness of some of the processes highlighted in this report, but the early findings indicate that the intervention appears to operating effectively:

▪ Market engagement: The level and format of early engagement with the market, particularly BDUK demonstrating it was listening to the views of the market, was important in establishing an intervention that network providers were interested in participating in.

▪ Intervention design: The intervention design process appears to have achieved the intended aims. It has balanced incorporating learning from the Superfast Broadband Programme around which areas are built to first with ensuring there is market interest. The approach to the ordering of connections used for the GIS intervention, in parallel with the rolling OMR process, was described as an improvement from the Superfast Broadband Programme in terms of preventing overbuild.

▪ Intervention areas: The intervention areas identified by BDUK appear to represent areas which have a higher need of public subsidy to ensure the population can access gigabit capable networks. Providing intervention areas of different sizes has allowed different types of network provider to participate in the intervention and has allowed all contracts tendered to date to attract bids.

▪ Intervention participation: All contracts tendered at the time of this research had attracted submissions from network providers, with 12 of the 19 contracts that have been awarded attracting more than one bid.

▪ OMR responses: BDUK have secured a high level of participation in the OMR process. Out of 120 network providers invited to take part, more than three quarters have provided a response. This includes all large, national providers. The most recent national OMR process, in May 2023, secured 57 responses, again including all large, national providers.

▪ Resources required to complete the OMR: Network providers reported that the resources required to complete the OMR process is substantial but has decreased over time due to learnings made by the providers and improvements made to the process by BDUK. These improvements included providing clearer guidance on requirements and making slight alterations to the data request to align more closely with the Connected Nations request from Ofcom.

▪ OMR Feedback: Network providers reported that the feedback to more recent iterations of the OMR process provided a good level of detail about their submission, and was helpful to them in terms of future submissions. Previously feedback had been described as being insufficient and not useful.

▪ Rolling OMR process: The proportion of English premises that have been categorised as ‘white’ in the year since the national OMR process was launched has altered, with a significant decrease in the premises categorised as ‘white’. This change will have significant impacts on where the GIS intervention will provide subsidised networks in order to maximise additionality. This highlights the benefits of undertaking a dynamic, rolling OMR process to BDUK and protecting the public purse.

▪ Further changes to OMR process: Further work is ongoing to enhance the OMR, including internal data verification, ongoing reviews of the feedback provided to respondents and how the results of the OMR are shared. These changes will need to be assessed in subsequent evaluation activity.

One area of concern which was highlighted in the research was around the level of engagement with local bodies nations. BDUK has taken responsibility for the OMR and tendering processes in England and Wales, which used to be the responsibility of the local bodies in the Superfast Broadband Programme.

There appears to be some current challenges around data sharing between BDUK and the local bodies. This has led to some concerns being raised around the premises contracts are delivering to (and whether they would be covered by commercial or local authority build) and not utilising local knowledge in the tendering process. Additionally, local body input will be essential for the delivery of projects, therefore relationships with the local bodies nations will need to be strong to ensure the GIS intervention can be delivered effectively.

A further area of concern was around BDUK’s internal data across different interventions, most notably across the GIS intervention and the voucher scheme. BDUK are currently trying to improve the quality of their internal data, to make sure staff working on different interventions have a clear view of the premises other interventions are delivering to. This change should help to improve the accuracy of the OMR process and the premises categorised as ‘white’.

The report itself makes for quite a laborious read, unless you’re deeply interested in the technical side of the programme like we are, and no doubt some people will also view it along the lines of marking your own homework (i.e. containing some criticism, albeit largely playing it safe).

However, one area we would like to see improved is the issue of public transparency, specifically with the progress that each awarded contract has made. Under the previous SFBB programme, we got regular quarterly updates of how many premises had been delivered and the level of take-up obtained by each region/contract etc. Some local authorities also produced useful roll-out maps. But such data has not been so forthcoming under Project Gigabit, and the reports we do get are often far too limited.

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Mark-Jackson
By Mark Jackson
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 .
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3 Responses

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  1. Avatar photo Alistairs says:

    In short, opaque to the point of a whitewash.

    No surprise when they get to correct own homework.

  2. Avatar photo SicOf says:

    Didn’t we do well (not really badly).
    Err if its not publically tranparent isnt it simply rather deceiptful, after all why hanestly report to your payer, oh no, the honesty not maketting or spin (selective ‘truth’), smoke n mirrors 🙁

    Where the unnecessary duplication costs

  3. Avatar photo mike says:

    An opaque black hole. More than 18 months on from awarding a regional contract around our way, there is no more build information than a tiny grainy map on the BDUK site, and who knows if that is even accurate or up to date.

    Meanwhile virtually the whole country is blocked from applying for GBVS voucher schemes.

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