GoFibre Expands Project Gigabit Broadband Rollout in Teesdale UK

ISPreview has spotted that the Government’s (DSIT) Building Digital UK (BDUK) agency have issued a contract modification notice for alternative network ISP GoFibre. This modestly expands their state aid funded Project Gigabit broadband roll-out of full fibre technology for hard-to-reach rural parts of Teesdale (Lot 4.01) in County Durham.

The original Local Supplier (Type A) deployment contract for Teesdale was first announced all the way back in late September 2022 (here). At the time this was valued at £6.6 million (public funding) and would have seen GoFibre building their Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network to reach slightly over 4,000 premises in Teesdale. The build phase itself was expected to take 4 years to complete.

However, 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 (OMR) of UK deployment plans by network operators. For example, commercial operators may expand or reduce their roll-out plans in the same region, which can reduce or increase 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 the level of allocated public funding may change over time, although the latest modification notice for Lot 4.01 only mentions that the change was caused by “additional scope added to the contract in accordance with the UK subsidy control regime”. But the good news is that, given the small size of the original deal, this outcome reflects a modest expansion.

“Following the modification, the awarded contract value has increased by £453,986, bringing the total to £7,055,986 from the initially committed value. The awarded premises have increased by 376, resulting in a total of 4,455 premises from the 4,079 previously committed,” said the modification notice.

The change might not sound like much, but in a rural area that can reflect a sizeable geographic expansion to network cover. Sadly, we don’t yet know exactly which communities or additional villages may benefit from this expansion, but GoFibre may well release more details in the future.