Wessex Internet has bagged its largest Project Gigabit deal so far, securing a £33.5m Government contract to deliver broadband to 21,400 homes and businesses in rural areas of south and west Dorset, along with south Somerset.
Tue, 28/02/2023 - 09:53
BDUK has shared a winter update for Project Gigabit, it's £5 billion programme to boost connectivity in hard-to-reach communities.
The body has so far awarded six contracts with a combined value of £164.8m. This includes two awarded since the Autumn quarterly update in Central Cornwall and South West Cornwall, totalling £36m, and covering up to 19,250 premises. These were signed with Wildanet (link).
BDUK has also launched 14 further procurements, yet to be awarded, with a combined estimated value of £906.7m.
In the last quarter, procurements were launched in West and East Sussex, Kent, South Wiltshire and Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire and Milton Keynes. It expects to launch a further three regional procurements in Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and West of Lincolnshire, and Leicestershire and Warwickshire in the coming weeks, along with two more local procurements for North and South Oxfordshire.
This means 20 procurements are live, totalling just over £1 billion of public money.
In recent months Over recent months BDUK has identified the first areas where a cross-regional supplier framework might be needed. It settled on North Wiltshire and South Gloucestershire, West and Mid-Surrey, Staffordshire, West Berkshire, Cornwall & Isles of Scilly, Hertfordshire, North West and Mid Wales, West and North Devon.
BDUK has also partnered with National Parks England, Openreach and Trenches Law on an agreement that prioritises preservation whilst rolling out fibre in rural landscapes.
Gigabit Vouchers
Over 114,000 vouchers have been issued so far under the Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme and its previous iterations. To date 84,000 of these vouchers have been used to connect premises to gigabit-capable broadband.
Coverage across the Union
The Scottish Government’s £600m Reaching 100% (R100) programme, supported with £49.5m of additional UK government investment, has now delivered over 15,000 gigabit-capable connections across Scotland. It has so far benefited from more than £6.7m through voucher schemes, connecting almost 3,000 properties across Scotland from the Highlands and Islands to the Scottish Borders.
In Wales, initial market engagement has taken place with suppliers and final intervention areas are now being developed with the aim of launching procurements by the summer.
The current Superfast Cymru project will complete by the end of March 2023 and will have provided up to a further 37,000 premises with access to gigabit-capable broadband. Approximately 32,500 premises have been covered to date.
As of the end of January 2023, 2,800 homes and businesses in hard-to-reach parts of Wales had been connected using vouchers.
Northern Ireland has the highest level of gigabit-capable coverage in the UK at 89%. To date, Project Stratum has delivered gigabit-capable coverage to 47,000 of a total planned 85,000 premises.
Rt. Hon Michelle Donelan MP, said: “This latest Building Digital UK report presents a milestone achievement, with £1 billion of Project Gigabit’s funding now available to suppliers.
“We are not stopping there. In the next few months, we will witness a further acceleration of the rollout of Project Gigabit, with contracts set to be awarded covering locations across Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, the New Forest and Shropshire, and spades in the ground in many of the places covered by contracts signed last year.”
