Concerns Raised Over Progress of Kent UK’s Project Gigabit Broadband Rollout UPDATE
The Kent County Council (KCC) in England has complained to the UK government about a “lack of progress” being made on the region’s Project Gigabit broadband rollout contract for rural communities. The £112m (state aid) contract for this was awarded to CityFibre in early 2024 (here), which committed to extend full fibre to 50,000+ hard-to-reach premises.
However, the last progress update we saw on the contract for Kent (Lot 29) came in January 2025, when CityFibre announced that they’d entered the rollout (build) phase. But since then neither CityFibre nor the government’s Building Digital UK (BDUK) agency has issued any further progress updates of real substance and it didn’t figure into BDUK’s recent progress update either (here), albeit mainly because the data for that only ran to the end of 2024.
Paul King, KCC’s Cabinet Member for Economic Development and Coastal Regeneration, has now written to Sir Chris Bryant MP, UK Minister for Data Protection and Telecoms, asking “why there has been so little progress” in delivering the Government’s Project Gigabit programme across Kent, despite the procurement work starting more than three years ago.
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“To date, BDUK have still not published any indications as to when local areas are likely to benefit from these connections – or details on whether any premises have been connected to date,” said the statement from KCC. Cllr King also raised the lack of information available to home and business owners about when they might receive the new broadband capability as a concern. He explained this made it difficult for them to make decisions about tying in with providers who will not be able to offer services on the new infrastructure.
The councillor added that there are at least 100,000 properties in the county who could have the fast speeds who do not feature in the current programme and there is currently “no suggestion if or when they might in any future plans for expansion of the project“.
Councillor Paul King said:
“Good broadband connectivity is essential to enable any business to thrive and for residents to access the services and opportunities they need. We understand the complexities and challenges involved in building broadband infrastructure in hard-to-reach areas but it is difficult to understand why it is taking so long for these much-needed connections to be delivered at the pace required.
This is simply not acceptable. Our region continues to lag substantially behind with respect to broadband connectivity while the UK’s Industrial Strategy 2025 is contingent on unlocking the value of data and accelerating AI adoption across businesses. If this Government is serious about economic growth then digital infrastructure must come first – without reliable internet access, AI is nothing more than a buzzword.”
The issue that KCC raises is in fact not unique to Kent. The Project Gigabit programme as a whole, which is much more centrally managed than earlier schemes (e.g. Superfast Broadband Programme / SFBB), has been generally quite poor at keeping people in contracted areas up-to-date with progress once the build has begun.
So while earlier schemes, run and managed at the local authority level, often produced regular progress updates, reports and interactive coverage maps etc. The Project Gigabit programme has communicated very little of the same and only recently started releasing general data on the number of contracted premises that had been built.
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ISPreview has raised this with BDUK a few times before and we are expecting Kent to be included in the programme’s next progress update, which is due to drop before the end of this year (this should also include some additional details). But there’s clearly room for improvement, although the government would perhaps need to put more resources on the table to make that happen.
In the meantime, Cllr King has asked for the restoration of the Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme (GBVS) in Kent, “so communities can request a better broadband connection in their area“. The GBVS is currently suspended across much of the country (not all), including Kent, albeit partly to avoid it clashing with and risking a duplication of public investment with Project Gigabit’s primary build contracts.
We have also asked CityFibre for a comment and hopefully a progress update on the deployment in Kent.
UPDATE 1st Sept 2025 @ 4:02pm
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We’ve had a response from CityFibre and also understand that, within the first approved drawdown under the contract, the operator has delivered the first milestone on schedule and are on track for the second. But we didn’t get any details of that progress, which would have been nice and kind of reinforces the council’s complaint.
A CityFibre spokesperson told ISPreview:
“CityFibre has been working closely with BDUK and Kent County Council to rollout ultrafast and reliable full fibre broadband across Kent, as part of the Government’s Project Gigabit programme, and we’re pleased to confirm works are progressing to schedule. Services are going live to an increasing number of residents in the area as the rollout continues.”
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 Linkedin.
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It’s interesting as I’m lot 29 in Kent. This was an area where CityFibre deployed in some of the streets back in 2023, but then abandoned it and never came back. All the cables and several green cabinets are in place but there is no active service. Currently though, Openreach are here filling the gaps that were left by them last year, so it’s positive news. My street doesn’t currently have works planned/listed by ones nearby do. Hopefully my time will soon be coming.
Looking on CityFibre’s website, the area is currently in their ‘announcing’ phase, even though some of the area has been done already. Does that imply they will come and complete it? By which time Openreach may have finished up and the uptake regarding them could be hampered.
If CityFibre can’t outpace the lumbering Openreach behemoth, what’s the point of Project Gigaflop…
A waste of taxes!
I wouldn’t call 4 million premises passed a year lumbering. Openreach are virtually building the equivalent of CityFibre’s network every year.
No-one gets paid until the work is complete, so I’m uncertain where the taxes are being wasted?
Being a cynic, past experience with two failed BDUK project allocations in my area, not to mention the debacle in SW England, suggests that when you get protracted delays in such projects that the usual result is a descoping exercise/project withdrawal.
Looking at Dan’s comment above & 1 location near me some of these areas seem to be getting covered by Openreach’s commercial build anyway.
You and Dan may be in the ‘lucky pot’ when it comes to a supplier of last resort stepping in to take over unfulfilled altnet BDUK contracts (and I’m truly glad for anyone in that situation). But after around 7 years of two failures to complete BDUK contracts there is currently still no sign of a provider of last resort (or of any resort) taking up the reins in my area to take on descoped BDUK white-listed properties. And I’m not hopeful anything will happen where I am until the early 2030s now. Meanwhile, services of 2.5Gbps and more are rolling out elsewhere.
The Councillor is correct since Project Gigaflop has no interest in rural Kent where Openreach can’t be bothered to infill despite FTTP being delivered in some areas, and FTTC too. Mobile 4G now and 5G soon seems to be the reality.
Insane that they won’t use the legacy copper pairs to pull through fibre wven a few 100 meters. At this rate the LEO satellite services from Eutelsat will beat fibre to it.
No plans and no delivery is a sorry result indeed.
The problem with pulling copper out whilst installing fibre is you then can’t maintain the existing network and OFCOM will not allow Openreach to upgrade this way
What happens to all the people with copper service in that scenario? You just cut them off? Not allowing that is hardly ‘insane’.
@Peach said “The problem with pulling copper out whilst installing fibre is you then can’t maintain the existing network”
Since the Digitisation of POTS has already started the legacy copper pairs have little to no value as an existing network. Any OFCOM delusion of an existing network is refuted by their mobile coverage data that shows landlines are pointless. In the 21st century, people want to talk to people, not buildings.
You are confusing two projects. Digital Voice works perfectly well over FTTC, which very much needs those copper pairs to work. Digital Voice does not require FTTP and those copper pairs are very much needed.
They’re recovering copper: https://www.constructelvisabeira.com/en/news/mj-quinn-secures-three-year-extension-for-openreach-heavy-cable-recovery-programme
Individual installers have used it to pull customer drops where ducts were marginal.
For the big cables is it a good idea to use a cable that could be 7 kg per metre to pull fibre instead of a draw rope? Probably not. Potential to stretch the fibre is there due to force necessary to draw the nearly three quarters of a ton of cable over a hundred metres, potential for it to be crushed *when* a broken duct that was being held up by the copper is no longer there just as initial thoughts.
To pull the copper out needs everyone that may have been on it to be using a different cable. If there are no alternative cables everyone needs to not be using ADSL or have MPF telephone services.
If it were this easy they’d be doing it. While I appreciate that in your opinion they don’t do things because they ‘can’t be bothered’ oftentimes it’s because it’s not possible and most of the rest of the time it’s because it costs too much.
@Polish Poler
Thanks for your interesting reply.
I’m talking about the MPF telephone services where FTTC is already delivered, so premises to cabinet, not exchange, being individual copper pairs, not 7kg/m big cables.
Thus each pair is independent of any other, allowing customers choice if they want POTS (Digital Voice), FTTC or FTTP service.
So not being a customer or physical challenge to pull through fibre from the cabinet to customer premises using the legacy pair is why the effort and cost seems low. Certainly lower than new laid connections to new built premises.
I’m assuming that the cabinet can join the existing fibre from the exchange with the new fibre to the customer premises. That must be a solved problem given the existing fibre network.
Currently all we see is ‘No plan’ for FTTP, when a pull through from FTTC cabinet for 100m seems a simple FTTP deployment. Thus my ‘can’t be bothered’ as it’s both feasible, quick and cheap.
FTTP isn’t built from FTTC cabinets it runs in parallel. The actual single fibre core feeding a home comes from the top of a pole or an underground chamber.
The only exception is where an existing cabinet has the FTTP OLT, the equipment generating the signal, attached however build is done from there out to usually nearest pole or chamber to properties.
Too many premises on most cabinets to have homes connect there. Need to be intermediate points to aggregate the single fibres from homes onto higher fibre count cables and as mentioned those almost never go back to cabinets, they go back to where the cabinets get their fibre from.
This is the same as everyone else by the way, you can find both CityFibre and Virgin Media documentation mentioning multiple levels of cabinets with the ones closest to homes having capacity for maybe 64 unless there is hardware in between aggregating homes which means using cabinet copper to pull fibre isn’t going to help you.
Openreach installers absolutely use the existing copper to pull fibre but obviously can only do it when the copper and fibre will serve a single premises.
According to thinkbroadband.com, Kent has 82% with Gigabit coverage (DOCSIS 3.1 or FTTP). Neighbouring East Sussex has 78.52%.
To what extent this complaint is “political” I don’t know, but many areas would be delighted to have Kent’s coverage.
There may also be problems with landlords and council planning consent, tree preservation and conservation rules.
Mostly VM’s coax or RFoG though.
This shouldn’t even be classed as satisfying Gigabit as its legacy technology with inherit latency over proper FTTP that is pure fibre, with lots of customers experiencing SNR issues, power level issues and over utilisation in some areas.
You think we should overbuild existing gigabit capable infrastructure with new FTTP before areas with no fibre at all, because Virgin’s network doesn’t meet your approval?
Not at all. Just don’t include them in the figures until they have done Project Mustang (or whatever its called this week). Its basically FTTC at best.
https://labs.thinkbroadband.com/local/E10000016
Kent Gigabit 82%
Remove the DOCSIS 3.1 to leave just FTTP and its 75%
Lot 29 appears in areas where Netomnia have coverage generally, but not in the next street.
Does this mean CityFibre coming in to do infill then in those places? That would be a real odd mix of suppliers.
https://labs.thinkbroadband.com/local/broadband-map#12/51.3044/0.5655/bduk/youfibre/
Shows the addresses that are in the initial delivery phase so you can see how close or not to youfibre