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The MP for North Shropshire in England, Helen Morgan (Liberal Democrat), has called on the Government to take urgent action in its ongoing attempts to find a solution after network provider Freedom Fibre scaled back their £24m (public subsidy) Project Gigabit broadband roll-out contract for the region in June 2025.
Just to recap. The contract with Freedom Fibre originally aimed to cover “around” 12,000 hard-to-reach rural homes in North Shropshire with a Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network. But toward the end of June 2025 the operator (here), which had been under some financial strain, revealed that they’d already completed the build to 2,500 premises and would now only be able to reach 1,000 more (a total of 3,500 have since been completed).
The Government’s Building Digital UK (BDUK) agency then confirmed that they and Freedom Fibre had “mutually agreed to descope the remaining 8,500 premises from this contract“, which left affected premises stuck in limbo while efforts were made to find a solution. At the time BDUK said they were “moving swiftly to put in place alternative plans with other suppliers to connect premises that were due to be covered by this contract.”
According to the Border Counties Advertizer, a meeting was held this week with BDUK to update the local authority on their plans. The local MP said she was told that some as yet unserved properties in the previously contracted area may now have to wait until 2030 to receive full fibre. In addition, BDUK seems to have been unable to appoint a new provider to continue the work and is thus now considering “alternative delivery options“.
Helen Morgan (MP) said:
“The delay to the roll-out of high-speed broadband to North Shropshire is unacceptable. Families and businesses who were promised full fibre under Project Gigabit cannot afford to wait until 2030.
The Government must honour its commitment and deliver these connections as soon as possible. Once again rural areas are being left behind by a government that does not understand the reality of living with patchy mobile signal and snail-paced broadband.”
The update suggests that BDUK may be struggling to adopt the same approach as they did when a similar issue occurred with network operator Voneus in Mid West Shropshire (Lot 25.01), which resulted in the contract being scooped up by Openreach (BT) as part of their Cross-Regional (Type C) procurements (here). We had been expecting that this might work for North Shropshire (Lot 25.02) too, but that is now in doubt.
The above would have been the quickest solution to connecting such premises. But if the area is proving to be too challenging for such an approach (cost may be the big issue) and isn’t attracting interest from other suppliers, then that leaves few options. BDUK has already re-opened Shropshire to their Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme (GBVS), but that’s a very limited approach and is unlikely to deliver for the whole area.
In the meantime, locals impacted by this may need to consider more expensive alternatives, such as the Starlink service. Some of the related area may also be lucky enough to have access to a good 4G or 5G (mobile broadband) signal from one of the major mobile operators, but clearly that’s not going to be the case for everybody.