Openreach Takes on Project Gigabit Broadband Contract for Cheshire UK
The Government’s Building Digital UK (BDUK) agency has today confirmed that the previously stalled Project Gigabit broadband roll-out contract for Cheshire (Lot 17), which was originally held by Freedom Fibre until they “mutually agreed to terminate” it in March 2025 (here), has now been picked up by Openreach (BT). But it’s changed a bit in the process.
Just to recap. The contract for Cheshire (England) was originally valued at £43m (public subsidy) and aimed to extend gigabit-capable broadband connectivity to cover 15,000 premises in hard-to-reach areas, including villages like Kingswood, Allostock, Minshull Vernon and beyond. But this was sent into limbo after the contracted supplier, Freedom Fibre, suddenly pulled out just as the build phase was supposed to start.
At the time a spokesperson for BDUK told ISPreview that they were “now moving swiftly to put in place alternative plans with other suppliers to connect premises that were due to be connected. Freedom Fibre has not received any public funding for this contract“. Since then, we’ve been patiently waiting for an update on the plan for Cheshire (Lot 17).
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The good news is that BDUK has now agreed a contract change with Openreach to include the premises in this area within a new Call-Off 8 contract under Openreach’s existing Single Supplier Framework agreement with BDUK (here) – valued at c.£1.2bn, which is focused on Cross-Regional (Type C) procurements (no other suppliers currently tackle Type C). This is just as we speculated would happen last month (here).
Type C typically reflects remote areas where no or no appropriate market interest has previously been expressed before to BDUK, or areas that have been descoped or terminated from a prior procurement. Such areas are often skipped due to being too expensive (difficult) for smaller suppliers to tackle. A similar change happened to the contract for Mid West Shropshire (Lot 25.01) last year, which saw Voneus drop out and Openreach later ended up merging this into their existing Call-Off 3 contract (here).
However, while the original contract for Cheshire was valued at £43m and aimed to cover 15,000 premises in hard-to-reach areas, the new Call-off 8 contract is valued at £37.5m and will aim to extend gigabit-capable broadband to around 18,500 hard‑to‑reach premises. This is most likely taking advantage of the maturity of Openreach’s commercial FTTP deployment to help reach further into more difficult areas for less money.
At the time of writing, there isn’t currently a detailed contract info. page for Call Off 8 or an intervention map of the new roll-out area, but this should follow in the near future.
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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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Well, not a surprise then and good news for the people of rural Cheshire.
Less good news is that the actions of Openreach prevented an altnet building in my part of Cheshire back in 2021 by announcing a commercial build and then almost entirely not doing it.
Unfortunately, the commercial build announcement coupled with a change in voucher funding rules meant the altnet couldn’t build either.
Vouchers have been unavailable since then.
Our properties eventually went into Lot17 and became part of it’s chaotic journey.
Openreach are a commercial company and have every right to decide if they build or don’t build to an area.
If they don’t,then if people want to pursue a different route to fast broadband they should be allowed to.
However, placing towels on the deckchairs and not coming down to sunbathe for 5 years isn’t acceptable.
As it stands, we are now in the ‘building within the next year’ status on the Openreach website. If this is actually true we can look forward to an fttp service fully half a decade after we could have had a superior, gigabit symmetrical, service.
Oh, and Openreach have had CBTs on the top of poles here since December 2019
Still, mustn’t grumble.
If the altnet had received public subsidy for a build that was then overbuilt by Openreach some years later, people would (rightly) complain of a waste of public money. Openreach have been clear about their 2026 and 2030 build targets.
Alternatively, like Freedom Fibre in this story, the altnet may simply have abandoned the project part way through.
Well, there is nothing to stop Openreach overbuilding any network, subsidised or not.
Same goes for any other network builder.
I’m sure a commercial overbuild of a subsidised build has already happened somewhere although I don’t have any examples to hand (anyone ?).
Wether this is or would be a waste of public money is a different argument. Perhaps there shouldn’t be any subsidy, for example.
However, this and previous governments have put their weight behind Project Gigabit.
Project Gigabit, largely in the form of regional procurements and voucher funding, provides public funds to assist network building in difficult to reach areas that are unlikely to be reached within a 3 year horizon. That’s it.
It is there to encourage builders to come forward and build now in areas that would otherwise face waiting years or will perhaps never be reached otherwise.
In effect, Openreach removed subsidy from our area and what we got instead was CBTs on top of poles over 6 years ago and we are still waiting for the fibre that feeds them to be installed.
B4RN,on the other hand, had a project ready to go in 2021 and only voucher funding being pulled stopped it.
Towels on deckchairs.
“However, placing towels on the deckchairs and not coming down to sunbathe for 5 years isn’t acceptable.” Great Analogy, Looks like Openreach have some German Nationals in the workforce. 🙂
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