News

From today, local and regional authorities can apply for a share of the funding 

The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) has today announced £40 million in funding to turn local and regional authorities into ‘5G Innovation Regions’. 

Funding will be awarded to winning regions that can successfully demonstrate how they will drive the adoption and development of 5G and other wireless technologies across varying sectors, including public services, agriculture, transport and advanced manufacturing.  

For example, one region’s application involves using 5G-enabled drones to scan fields, allowing farmers to make data driven agricultural decisions for increased efficiency. 

Successful applicants will be designated ‘5G innovation regions’, with DSIT hoping the leveraging of 5G and other wireless technologies will promote economic growth at local levels, opening up new commercial opportunities for the regions. 

“Greater adoption of 5G-powered technologies will help deliver more efficient public services, new opportunities for residents and businesses, and a boost for economic growth – and this new fund will give local areas from across the country the opportunity to be at the forefront of Britain’s world-leading 5G revolution,” said Sir John Whittingale, Minister for Data and Digital Infrastructure. 

The UK Telecoms Innovation Network (UKTIN) will be collaborating with winning applicants to increase the speed with which 5G is adopted in key sectors, as well as launching a campaign to bring together telecoms providers with businesses who want to adopt 5G services. The campaign will aim to help educate firms on how they will benefit from 5G enabled services and how they can access it.  

“What this means for 5G Innovation Regions is that we’ll be collaborating with the successful local and regional authorities to understand and disseminate their learnings to all regions and devolved nations, ensuring the whole of the UK has access to actionable insights. We’ll also be developing practical and pragmatic toolkits to support different locations and vertical sectors as they navigate the complexity of what, when and how to deploy solutions,” said Nick Johnson, head of UKITN. 

“It is only by creating demand and helping organisations navigate the technology adoption hurdles in this way that we can realise the true potential of new innovations.” 

The 5G Innovation Regions programme will run until March 2025, with winning bidders expected to be announced later this year. 

Join the conversation around the acceleration of the UK’s 5G infrastructure at this year’s Connected Britain conference 

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Space broadband provider OneWeb, which is part-owned by the UK government, has revealed that their recently launched GEN2 prototype satellite – “Joey-Sat” – has passed its initial in-orbit tests and is now moving to start demonstrating what its new technologies will be able to do for faster broadband and 5G connectivity. Just to recap. OneWeb […]

News 

Procurement for Type C contracts launched on 27th July, with two contracts currently on offer 

Building Digital UK (BDUK) – the government’s executive agency set up to deliver the £5 billion Project Gigabit has begun the procurement phase for the award for the first Cross-Regional Supplier Framework contracts.  

Project Gigabit aims to deliver download speeds of 1Gbps to at least 85% of the UK by 2025, and 99% by 2030.  

Currently, around 76% of UK premises can access gigabit-capable broadband, though this total falls to 53% when considering purely fibre-to-the-premises. 

According to Ofcom forecasts, gigabit coverage is currently on track to reach 92% by March 2025. 

So far, however, the vast majority of this gigabit-broadband availability has been funded by the private sector, with the first Project Gigabit contracts only being awarded last year. 

To date, most of the Project’s funding has been allocated to the Gigabit Infrastructure Subsidy programme. Here, network operators bid to extend their gigabit broadband networks to harder-to-reach areas across the UK through a Dynamic Purchasing System. Roughly £1.4 billion has been allocated in the form of local (Type A) contracts and regional (Type B) contracts. 

Now, BDUK is set to begin the procurement phase for the award of two cross-regional (Type C) contracts for the first time. This process aims to find a single ISP partner to provide access to economically unviable areas not already covered commercially or by Type A or Type C subsidies.  

The two contracts in this case are covering 57,500 premises across parts of Lancashire, North Wiltshire and South Gloucestershire, West and Mid-Surrey, Staffordshire, West Berkshire, and Hertfordshire, and 47,700 premises across parts of West and North Devon, North West and Mid Wales, and South East Wales. 

These contracts are set to receive subsidies of £149.7 million and £139.7 million, respectively. 

The procurements are open for interest until 27th August this year, and all being well, the first Cross-Regional Supplier Framework contracts should be awarded around June 2024. 

In related news, it is worth noting here that the slow progress of Project Gigabit has not gone unnoticed by the government. Just last week, it was announced that Dan Creamer has been appointed as the new CEO of BDUK, replacing Paul Norris who had faced criticism over the Project’s lack of results.  

Want to hear more from the operators and their role in building Gigabit Britain? Join the operator in discussion at the upcoming Connected Britain conference 

Also in the news:
CityFibre wins trio of Project Gigabit contracts worth £318m
GoFibre embraces the ethos of Project Gigabit
Openreach: The full fibre take-up challenge and building networks of the future 

News

Kirky will take over the role no later than the end of January 2024

Today, BT has announced that their new CEO will be Allison Kirkby, current CEO of Swedish operator Telia.

Kirkby, who is already a non-executive board member of BT, will replace the outgoing Philip Jansen, who confirmed he would be stepping down from the role earlier this month.

Jansen joined BT in 2019 and, just one year later, had the unenviable task of leading the company through the coronavirus pandemic.

But while the company’s response to this global crisis was broadly praised, the relative turmoil did little to alleviate the financial pressure on the UK operator, which had attempting to streamline itself for years prior to Jansen’s tenure.

Indeed, Jansen’s four years as CEO would see the company take these cost-cutting measures even further, increasing the companies savings target from £2.5 billion to £3 billion by 2025.

More recently, as part of this process, he orchestrated a massive job cutting programme at BT, aiming to reduce the company’s workforce by around 55,000 people by the end of the decade. At the time, Jansen said that the growing role of AI would reduce the number of network engineers needed by around 10,000, with AI-related automation expected to replace a further 10,000 jobs.

Kirkby, it seems, aims to continue the structural transformation Jansen started, saying in a statement that she was fully supportive of the strategy.

“I’m incredibly honoured to have been appointed as the next chief executive of BT Group,” said Kirkby. “BT is such an important company for the UK and our many customers, both in the UK and internationally, and is uniquely placed to help everyone benefit from the rapid advances in digitalisation. Our products and services have never been more important to how our customers live and work, and thanks to the significant investment BT is putting into digital infrastructure and in the modernisation of its services, I see us playing an even more important role going forward. Having been a member of the BT Group board for the past four years, I’m fully supportive of our strategy and am excited about leading it into its next phase of development, as we grow to support customers, shareholders and the UK economy.”

Kirkby has plenty of relevant experience to draw from, having held the role of CEO at both Danish operator TDC and Swedish operator Tele2 before taking up the leadership position at Telia in 2020.

During her time at Telia, she had in fact been overseeing a similar streamlining process to the one now facing her at BT, having divested of the company’s assets and improved efficiencies while simultaneously maintaining the pace of its expensive 5G network rollout.

Kirkby will remain in the role of Telia CEO until the end of January 2024 at the latest, with the Swedish company saying it will begin looking for a replacement immediately.

But perhaps a more unique challenge awaits Kirkby at BT in the form of the increasing presence of billionaire Patrick Drahi within the company’s corporate structure.

The French-Israeli telecoms magnate has grown his stake in BT steadily to 24.5% since 2021, with recent rumours suggesting that he is considering increasing that stake yet further, to 29.9% – the maximum stake allowed before triggering a mandatory investigation by the UK government.

Drahi insists that he has no interest in presenting BT with a takeover offer, but this has not stopped BT from taking suitable precautions.

In fact, Drahi may not be the only investor that could be interested in taking control of the UK telecoms giant, with reports earlier this month suggesting that Deutsche Telekom may be preparing its own takeover effort.

Thus, with major cost savings to be achieved, an expensive fibre rollout to complete, and hungry investors potentially poised to pounce on BT’s financial misfortune, Kirkby will surely have her work cut out for her at the helm of BT.

How is the UK telecoms landscape evolving in 2023? Join the operators in discussion at this year’s Connected Britain event

Also in the news:
CityFibre wins trio of Project Gigabit contracts worth £318m
GoFibre embraces the ethos of Project Gigabit
Openreach: The full fibre take-up challenge and building networks of the future 

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A new report from Thinkbroadband has provided a useful independent assessment of how big – in terms of network size (coverage footprint) – the top 17 largest Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP networks in the UK have become in Q2 2023, which we’ve compared against the official coverage claims below. Regular readers will already be aware […]

Broadband, phone and mobile giant BT Group (inc. Openreach, Plusnet and EE) has this morning announced that it has chosen Allison Kirkby, the current President & CEO of telecommunications multinational operator Telia Company in Sweden since early 2020, to replace Philip Jansen in the role of CEO at the start of next year. The announcement […]

The Government’s Building Digital UK agency has started the procurement phase for the award of their first major Cross-Regional Supplier Framework (Type C) contract under the £5bn rural Project Gigabit broadband rollout scheme, which could see a single network operator being picked to help cover some of the most challenging areas. Currently, over 76% of […]

The Government’s Building Digital UK (BDUK) agency has reportedly changed its current CEO, Paul Norris, and appointed the man who oversaw the 2022 Commonwealth Games, Dean Creamer, to take on the role after concerns were allegedly raised over “slow” progress in their £5bn Project Gigabit broadband rollout. The aim of the project is to extend […]