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The Government’s (DSIT) Building Digital UK (BDUK) agency appears to have published another contract modification notice for UK broadband ISP Wildanet, which will see their £18m state aid funded Project Gigabit broadband roll-out across hard-to-reach rural parts of South West Cornwall (Lot 32.02) being extended.
The original contract for South West Cornwall (Lot 32.02), alongside the linked award for Central Cornwall (Lot 32.03), was first announced all the way back in January 2023 (here) and was due to take 4 years to build. The details of 32.02 committed Wildanet to extending their Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband network to covering 9,200 premises (the similar Lot 32.03 targeted 9,400 premises with £17.6m of state aid).
However, Project Gigabit’s contracts are not static and their scope, as well as committed levels of public funding, can change over time for a number of different reasons (this is informed by regular ‘Open Market Reviews’ of UK deployment plans by broadband operators). For example, commercial operators may expand or reduce their roll-out plans in the same region, which can reduce or increase the scope for public investment within those same contracted areas.
The contracted operator could also find the deployment more expensive or even cheaper than previously envisaged, such as due to changes in build costs and interest rates / inflation, as well as any unexpected obstacles to street works or greater efficiencies of build than planned or expected. Rising build costs and high interest rates are currently a well-known bugbear for the whole industry.
Suffice to say, there can be various reasons why the contracted scope of related builds and level of allocated public funding may change over time, although the latest modification notice for 32.02 only mentions that the change was caused by “errors identified in the supplier’s financial model” (i.e. the modification is intended to correct for this). But the good news is that the outcome reflects a modest expansion.
“Awarded value after modification £18,534,622.22, value increased by £422,879.78. The total awarded premises have increased from 9,229 to a total of 9,718, from the original 9,128,” said the modification notice. This marks a nice coverage improvement for a smaller local supplier (type a) contract of this size, benefitting hundreds of extra premises in remote rural parts of South West Cornwall. The total contract value after the modifications is now stated to be £18,977,502 +vat.
Map of Wildanet’s Original Project Gigabit Rollout
