1 day Ago By Dan Robinson
The UK government has signed contracts with BT Group's Openreach worth upwards of £289 million ($363 million) for the further build-out of fiber infrastructure to serve more rural areas as part of Project Gigabit. According to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology (DSIT), about 131,000 hard-to-reach homes and businesses are set to be able to access high-speed broadband as part of these four latest contracts, by which it means that their areas will get the plumbing in place ready for customers to sign up for services. The latest tranche covers areas including North and Southwest Wales, Shropshire, Herefordshire, Devon, Somerset, Essex, North East England and Worcestershire, providing towns and villages in these locations with access to high-speed telecommunications.
Project Gigabit was launched back in 2021 under the previous government, since when dozens of contracts for rural infrastructure representing more than £2.2 billion ($2.76 billion) of investment have been signed, DSIT said.
The department claims that over 85 percent of the country now has access to a gigabit connection – meaning the infrastructure is at least there – on the way to meeting the government's target of more-or-less complete gigabit coverage by 2030. "With today's £289 million investment, we are not only boosting connectivity, but making it easier to access remote healthcare, online education, shopping online, work, learn, shop and stay in touch with loved ones," Technology Secretary Peter Kyle said. "We are determined to deliver the infrastructure this country needs to thrive, and I am thrilled to see so many homes and businesses in all areas of the country getting access to the fastest broadband speeds on the market through Project Gigabit.
" These latest contracts add to the 96,600 premises already included under a UK government agreement signed last year with Openreach, the infrastructure arm of Britain's former state-owned telecoms monopoly BT, and are claimed to bring the total funding made available up to £800 million. "Our new Full Fiber broadband network now reaches more than half of all properties in the UK, and we're confident we can reach as many as 30 million premises by the end of the decade, assuming the right regulatory and investment conditions exist," chirped Openreach CEO Clive Selley. Openreach isn't the only network plumber in the country these days – other previous contracts were awarded to so-called alternative network (altnet) providers such as CityFibre, which picked up £318 million in 2023 to build out infrastructure in parts of Norfolk, Suffolk and Hampshire.
We asked DSIT why all of these latest contracts have been awarded to BT's subsidiary, rather than being put out to competitive tender like the one just mentioned, but it failed to respond. However, Mark Jackson, telecoms expert at ISP Review told us the likely explanation is that earlier such awards which went to altnets were for Type A (smaller local build) or Type B (regional build) contracts. By comparison, Type C contracts represent "cross-regional" builds, which are of a different scale.
The idea behind these is to appoint a single supplier in areas where no market interest has been expressed before, and this is considered too expensive for smaller suppliers to tackle. "The government could have taken an alternative approach, which would have involved opening all of those areas up to their gigabit voucher scheme. But that is very much demand-led by interest from individual properties and communities, which makes delivery less of a certainty," Jackson said.
Last year, Britain's other major telco, Virgin Media O2 (VMO2), said it was initiating plans to create a national fixed network company (NetCo) that would operate as an alternative national infrastructure provider to Openreach , backed by its shareholders Liberty Global and Telefónica. We understand this project remains on track, but it is likely to be some time before the company is ready to go to market as a direct rival with the clout to compete with Openreach in the wholesale sector. ®.
