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The Government’s Building Digital UK (BDUK) agency has just announced that their Project Gigabit broadband roll-out contract for Mid West Shropshire (Lot 25.01), which was originally held by Voneus until they “mutually agreed to terminate” it at the end of 2024 (here), has now been merged into Openreach’s (BT) existing call-off 3 deployment contract.
Just to recap. The Lot 25.01 contract for Mid West Shropshire (England) was originally valued at £12m (state aid) and aimed to extend gigabit-capable broadband connectivity to cover 6,000 premises in hard to reach areas, including Alberbury, Westbury, Snailbeach, Wentnor, Ford, Hanwood, Longden, Dorrington, Leebotwood and Bicton. But this was sent into limbo after the contracted supplier, Voneus, pulled out just as the build phase was supposed to start.
The big news today is that BDUK has reached an agreement with Openreach (BT) to include the Mid West Shropshire deployment into their existing Single Supplier Framework agreement (here), which is focused on Cross-Regional (Type C) procurements. This reflects remote areas where no or no appropriate market interest had 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.
The plan for Lot 25.01 has thus effectively been merged into Openreach’s existing Type C (Call Off 3) contract and you can see the impact of this below.
Openreach’s Type C Contract Change (Call-Off 3)
Original:
Type C (Call Off 3): East and South Shropshire, North Herefordshire, North Wales, and South West Wales
Premises: 47,000
Final Value: £108.94mRevised:
Type C (Call Off 3): East, South and Mid West Shropshire, North Herefordshire, North Wales, and South West Wales
Premises: 52,000
Final Value: £119.3m
We’ve asked Openreach if they’re able to comment on this change and will report back later, although the move always seemed like a possibility given the focus of Type C areas and Openreach as a logical fallback. Speaking of which, a number of other alternative networks have pulled out of their Project Gigabit contracts (e.g. Freedom Fibre in Cheshire and FullFibre Ltd in West Herefordshire and the Forest of Dean + Peak District), which could potentially take the same approach in the future.