The UK government’s £5bn Project Gigabit broadband rollout scheme has awarded the £73.47 million (state aid) regional contract for North Yorkshire (Lot 31) in England to ISP Quickline, which will aim to extend their 10Gbps capable full fibre (FTTP) network to almost 40,000 additional premises in hard to reach rural areas.
The development reflects another significant win for Quickline, which has previously also secured the Project Gigabit roll-out contracts for both the West Yorkshire and York Area (Lot 8 – 28,000 premises, £60m) and South Yorkshire (Lot 20 – 32,100 premises, £44m). Suffice to say, they’ve now won the related rural builds for almost the whole of Yorkshire.
Just to recap. Project Gigabit is working to help extend 1Gbps (download) capable networks to reach at least 85% of UK premises by the end of 2025, before aiming to achieve “nationwide” coverage (c. 99%) by 2030 (here). Commercial investment is expected to deliver more than 80% of this, which leaves the government’s scheme to focus on tackling the rest (mostly rural and some sub-urban areas), where the private sector alone often fails.
The project uses a number of different methods to tackle this challenge (e.g. vouches and investment in dark fibre builds), but the largest part of the scheme involves a gap-funded subsidy approach – the Gigabit Infrastructure Subsidy (GIS). This is where smaller local, larger regional or major cross-regional contracts are awarded to network operators who can help to build their gigabit-capable infrastructure into the most challenging areas (final 20%).
The Building Digital UK (BDUK) agency, which manages Project Gigabit, has already awarded a sizeable number of deployment contracts to various network providers and the latest one – North Yorkshire (Lot 31) – has just gone to Quickline, which will expand their network to cover almost 40,000 additional premises in poorly served areas.
However, due to the ‘purdah’ period (i.e. rules that force politicians and civil servants to limit announcements during the pre-election period), we won’t be getting the usual press release and instead this development was spotted by ISPreview while we were checking up on the status of various government tenders. As such, we don’t know much about Quickline’s deployment plan, but those details should follow after the election. Quickline has also declined to comment.
Quickline is separately being supported by funding of c.£500m from Northleaf Capital Partners. The provider currently holds a wider aspiration to cove around 500,000 premises in rural and semi-rural areas across Northern England and beyond with “ultrafast broadband” via both their Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP / XGS-PON) and 5G based fixed wireless technology “by 2025” (here). Some 200,000 of those rural premises will be tackled by their wireless network, with the other half or more coming from FTTP.
Residential customers reached by their new full fibre network are typically charged from £29 per month on a 24-month term for 100Mbps (50Mbps upload) speeds with free installation, and that goes up to £49 for their top 900Mbps (450Mbps upload) tier. The first 3 months of service are also free.
Project Gigabit GIS Contract Awards History
➤ Wessex Internet for North Dorset (Lot 14.01) in August 2022 (here)
➤ GoFibre for Teesdale (Lot 4.01) in September 2022 (here)
➤ GoFibre for North Northumberland (Lot 34.01) in October 2022 (here)
➤ Fibrus for Cumbria (Lot 28) in November 2022 (here)
➤ Wildanet for Central Cornwall (Lot 32.03) and South West Cornwall (Lot 32.02) in January 2023 (here)
➤ CityFibre for Cambridgeshire (Lot 5) in March 2023 (here)
➤ Wessex Internet for the New Forest (Lot 27.01) in April 2023 (here)
➤ Freedom Fibre for North Shropshire (Lot 25.02) in May 2023 (here)
➤ CityFibre for Norfolk (Lot 7), Suffolk (Lot 2) and Hampshire (Lot 27) in July 2023 (here)
➤ Gigaclear for South Oxfordshire (Lot 13.01) and North Oxfordshire (Lot 13.02) in Nov 2023 (here)
➤ Connect Fibre for North East Staffordshire (Lot 19.01) in Nov 2023 (here)
➤ Connect Fibre for Derbyshire (Lot 3) in Dec 2023 (here)
➤ CityFibre for Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire & East Berkshire (Lot 26), Leicestershire & Warwickshire (Lot 11), West & East Sussex (Lot 16 & 1), Kent (Lot 29) and Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire & Milton Keynes (Lot 12) in Feb 2024 (here)
➤ Connexin for Nottinghamshire & West Lincolnshire (Lot 10) in Feb 2024 (here)
➤ Quickline for West Yorkshire and York Area (Lot 8) in Feb 2024 (here)
➤ Gigaclear for East Gloucestershire (Lot 18) in Feb 2024 (here)
➤ Wessex Internet for South Wiltshire (Lot 30) in Mar 2024 (here)
➤ Quickline for South Yorkshire (Lot 20) in Apr 2024 (here)
➤ FullFibre for West Herefordshire and the Forest of Dean (Lot 15) in Apr 2024 (here)
➤ FullFibre for Peak District (Lot 3.01) in Apr 2024 (here)
➤ Wessex Internet for Dorset and South Somerset (Lot 14) in Apr 2024 (here)
➤ Wildanet for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly (Lot 32) in Apr 2024 (here)
➤ Voneus for Mid West Shropshire (Lot 25.01) in Apr 2024 (here)
➤ Freedom Fibre for Cheshire (Lot 17) in May 2024 (here)
➤ Quickline for North Yorkshire (Lot 31) in June 2024