Openreach take on UK Project Gigabit broadband contract for Forest of Dean
The Government’s Building Digital UK (BDUK) unit has today confirmed that the second part of the previously stalled Project Gigabit broadband roll-out contract for West Herefordshire and the Forest of Dean (Lot 15), which was originally held by FullFibre Ltd until they “mutually agreed to terminate” it in May 2025 (here), has now been taken on by Openreach (BT).
Just to recap. The contract was originally valued at £23.4m (public subsidy) and aimed to extend gigabit-capable broadband connectivity to cover 7,900 premises in hard-to-reach areas (here). But this was sent into limbo after the contracted supplier 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 covered by this contract“. Since then we’ve already seen the West Herefordshire part of LOT 15 being picked up by Openreach in April 2026 (here) and today sees the Forest of Dean (Gloucestershire) side going the same way.
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Just like the prior contract change, the Forest of Dean build area has now been included into Openreach’s existing Call-off 3 contract under their Single Supplier Framework agreement – now potentially valued at c.£2.346bn, which is focused on Cross-Regional (Type C) procurements. This helps to explain last week’s announcement of an expansion to call-off 3, which saw the contract value increase by £7.97m with the addition of 3,616 premises.
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 de-scoped or terminated from a prior procurement. Such areas are often skipped due to being too expensive (difficult) for smaller suppliers to tackle. Openreach have already taken on deployments for other contracts that fell into similar difficulties with different altnets and so today’s outcome is not a surprise.
At the time of writing there’s not a lot of detail, with BDUK simply saying: “In September 2026 BDUK agreed a contract change with Openreach to include the Forest of Dean area within the existing Project Gigabit contract (call-off three).” Last week’s update was bigger than this and also included an expansion to Openreach’s Call-off 8 (Cheshire) contract, so more updates like this are expected to follow very soon.
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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Welcome to the party you fellow Project Gigabit’s Lot 15 residents of the Forest of Dean who’ve suffered the successive hopes and ensuing despairs of the Gigaclear and FullFibre debacles, especially any who were in Fastershire’s Lots 2/3c all the way back in 2015. Don’t go dancing in the streets and fields just yet, though. Think 2031 as your most likely date for fttp and be absolutely astonished (and eternally grateful) if it is delivered earlier. Remember: there is still scope for further descoping!
Lets hope BT don’t plan on repurposing their already archaic pole infrastructure, in this area. Gigaclear have laid their FTTP network, underground. BT can do the same, considering, they are getting similar huge amounts of Public money for doing the same. I won’t be holding my breath though, BT have already recieved huge amounts of Public money in the past, for this area, and achieved little to nothing…
Openreach (not BT) won’t be receiving subsidy to serve premises already served by an altnet.
Openreach (not BT) will use the most cost effective way to serve premises to ensure that the money, theirs or the taxpayer’s, provides the biggest benefit and serve as many premises as possible. That may mean continued use of overhead cabling in areas where that is how the copper network is delivered.
Openreach – and any isp getting public funding – only get paid once the work is done.