Project Gigabit Broadband Contract Tweaks for Wildanet, CityFibre, Fibrus and Quickline UPDATE

For the second time this week (here), the Government (DSIT) has published another round of contract modification notices for several of Wildanet, Fibrus, CityFibre and Quickline’s state aid funded Project Gigabit broadband roll-outs across several regions – North Yorkshire, Cornwall, Cumbria, Suffolk, Hampshire and Norfolk. The tweaks change both the level of public funding and premises target.

Just to repeat ourselves a little. Project Gigabit’s contracts are not static and their scope, as well as committed levels of public funding, can change over time for a number of different reasons (this is informed by regular ‘Open Market Reviews’ of UK deployment plans by broadband operators). For example, commercial operators may expand or reduce their roll-out plans in the same region, which can reduce or grow the scope for public investment within those same contracted areas.

The contracted operator could also find the deployment more expensive or even cheaper than previously envisaged, such as due to changes in build costs and interest rates / inflation, as well as any unexpected obstacles to street works or greater efficiencies of build than planned or expected. Rising build costs and high interest rates are currently a well-known bugbear for the whole industry.

Suffice to say, there can be various reasons why the contracted scope of related builds and level of allocated public funding may change over time. But officially the latest contract modifications only list the following highly generic reasons (except for Cornwall), without giving any real specifics.

Reasons for modification

Need for additional works, services or supplies by the original contractor/concessionaire.

Description of the economic or technical reasons and the inconvenience or duplication of cost preventing a change of contractor:

Additional scope added to the contract in accordance with the UK subsidy control regime.

As before, we’ve summarised the main before and after changes below (click the links to see the original news announcements for each). Interestingly, North Yorkshire has cropped up for a second time this week, which we think may have been due to a mistake with the previous modification notice.

Project Gigabit Contract Modifications (18th March 2025)

North Yorkshire (Lot 31) – Quickline

Following the modification, the awarded contract value has increased by £7,988,520 to £81,457,520 from the original value of £73,469,000. The awarded premises have increased by 6,401to a total of 42,701 from the original 36,300.

Cornwall and Isles of Scilly (Lot 32.02) – Wildanet

Awarded value after modification £18,007,306, value decreased by £8,694 – reflecting a “reduction in volume of UPRN’s from original contract in accordance with the UK subsidy control regime“.

Suffolk (Lot 2) – CityFibre

Following the modification, the awarded contract value has increased by £15,526,877 to £116,015,193 from the original value of £100,448,316. The awarded premises have increased by 9,469 to a total of 88,970 from the original 79,501.

Hampshire and Isle of Wight (Lot 27) – CityFibre

Following the modification, the awarded contract value has increased by £23,700,419 to £127,875,417 from the original value of £104,174,998. The awarded premises have increased by 10,832 to a total of 86,371 from the original 75,539.

Norfolk (Lot 7) – CityFibre

Following the modification, the awarded contract value has increased by £14,587,891 to £128,804,454 from the original value of £114,216,563. The awarded premises have increased by 13,363 to a total of 75,645 from the original 62,282.

One thing to be aware of is that changes like this can sometime also impact the expected completion date of a contract, although only a few of the awarded Project Gigabit contracts have actually announced a firm public completion date (this makes it harder to judge their progress). Such contracts are frequently reviewed, so we may see further changes to these and others in the future, although from now on we’ll only cover bigger modifications (minor changes, like for Cornwall above, aren’t really worth writing about).

UPDATE 20th March 2025 @ 2:42pm

An additional modification notification has just been published for Fibrus’ contract in Cumbria (Lot 28), which states the following information. Just take note that this mentions the “initial stage” and is thus not necessarily reflecting the whole contract, with the original announcement talking about c. 60,000 premises.

Cumbria (Lot 28) – Fibrus

Following the modification, the awarded contract value has increased by £50,709,374 to £149,748,406 from the initial stage committed value. The awarded premises have increased by 21,107 to a total of 53,536 from the original 32,429 premises committed in Initial stage to achieve 99% coverage.