Wessex Internet Tweak Project Gigabit Broadband Rollout for the New Forest

The Government’s Building Digital UK (BDUK) agency has tweaked their Project Gigabit broadband roll-out contract with rural ISP Wessex Internet for the New Forest area in Hampshire (Lot 27.01). The change reduces the number of contracted premises it was due to reach from 15,120 to 12,733 and similarly decreases the contract value (public subsidy) from £17.4m to £16.3m.

The original Lot 27.01 contract for the New Forest was first awarded to Wessex Internet back in April 2023 (here). At the time it was said to be worth “nearly” £14m and would aim to upgrade connectivity for “around” 10,500 hard-to-reach homes and businesses across rural parts of the area.

The contract has been adjusted a bit since then and remains a bit larger than the original announcement, but as above it has just gone through another modification to reduce its scope. As we’ve said before, it’s important to understand that Project Gigabit’s contracts are not static and their scope, as well as committed levels of public funding, will change over time for a number of different reasons – informed by regular ‘Open Market Reviews’ of existing UK deployment plans.

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 to be more expensive, or possibly even cheaper, than previously envisaged. Such adjustments may occur 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.

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. The government’s contract modification notices rarely provide much in the way of useful context, but in this case we suspect the latest tweak for the New Forest could reflect an increase in coverage by commercial operators (i.e. less of a need for public subsidy to support network expansion).

The most recent data from BDUK indicates that the provider has already completed the build to 9,530 premises under the contract (here), which equates to about 63% completion when factoring against the prior contracted build target of 15,120. The provider has been making good progress on their roll-out and so today’s change looks like more of a routine style adjustment, which could of course still change again in the future.