Original article ISPreview UK:Read More
The Government’s Building Digital UK (BDUK) agency has today confirmed that the previously stalled Project Gigabit broadband roll-out contract for Cheshire (Lot 17), which was originally held by Freedom Fibre until they “mutually agreed to terminate” it in March 2025 (here), has now been picked up by Openreach (BT). But it’s changed a bit in the process.
Just to recap. The contract for Cheshire (England) was originally valued at £43m (public subsidy) and aimed to extend gigabit-capable broadband connectivity to cover 15,000 premises in hard-to-reach areas, including villages like Kingswood, Allostock, Minshull Vernon and beyond. But this was sent into limbo after the contracted supplier, Freedom Fibre, suddenly 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 connected. Freedom Fibre has not received any public funding for this contract“. Since then, we’ve been patiently waiting for an update on the plan for Cheshire (Lot 17).
The good news is that BDUK has now agreed a contract change with Openreach to include the premises in this area within a new Call-Off 8 contract under Openreach’s existing Single Supplier Framework agreement with BDUK (here) – valued at c.£1.2bn, which is focused on Cross-Regional (Type C) procurements (no other suppliers currently tackle Type C). This is just as we speculated would happen last month (here).
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 descoped or terminated from a prior procurement. Such areas are often skipped due to being too expensive (difficult) for smaller suppliers to tackle. A similar change happened to the contract for Mid West Shropshire (Lot 25.01) last year, which saw Voneus drop out and Openreach later ended up merging this into their existing Call-Off 3 contract (here).
However, while the original contract for Cheshire was valued at £43m and aimed to cover 15,000 premises in hard-to-reach areas, the new Call-off 8 contract is valued at £37.5m and will aim to extend gigabit-capable broadband to around 18,500 hard‑to‑reach premises. This is most likely taking advantage of the maturity of Openreach’s commercial FTTP deployment to help reach further into more difficult areas for less money.
At the time of writing, there isn’t currently a detailed contract info. page for Call Off 8 or an intervention map of the new roll-out area, but this should follow in the near future.