Colton Superfast Broadband

Project Gigabit: All in for Full Fibre

May 26, 2023

We now have some news about the Fibrus roll-out in our parish. It's good news so far in that as far as I can see from a list that Fibrus has given me, all properties in the following areas are to get full fibre under the contract:

Rusland area (including Rusland, Thwaite Head, Thwaite Moss and Dale Park)

Oxen Park area (includes Oxen Park, High Longmire, Abbot Park and Bandrake Head)

Bouth area (includes Bouth, Black Beck & Snows)

(I'm hoping to get information concerning properties in the Spark Bridge/Nibthwaite area soon).

If you want to check your property is included, email me (mike at mpo1.uk - replacing the 'at' with '@') and I'll cross check it against my list.

This is all good news in so far as we don't need to do anything to get full fibre into our homes and businesses but what we don't know at this stage is the timing of the works: Fibrus have until the end of 2026 to complete the £108m Cumbrian contract. Watch this space!

Full fibre roll-out: commercial plans

Dec 22, 2022

Openreach have just published a full fibre deployment map showing where they are planning to run full fibre to the premises - giving Gigabit speeds to connected premises (FTTP). It can be found on: https://www.openreach.com/fibre-broadband/where-when-building-ultrafast-full-fibre-broadband

Two things to note: the first is that this map is by exchange area and not all premises will get FTTP & secondly, the map reflects the plans for Openreach's commercial roll out only (ie they will invest their own money to make a commercial return). Not surprisingly then that the areas to be connected are those of greatest population density. In addition, Fibrus have a £200m commercial programme in Cumbria: so lots happening on the commercial front.

Although these plans are unlikely to impact our part of the world, the Fibrus Project Gigabit contract represents up to £108m subsidy and there are apparently another 7 companies deploying in Cumbria or have plans to do so. When we get the detail of where Fibrus will deploy this subsidy, expected towards the end of January, we will then know whether our 'not spots' will be connected as part of Project Gigabit or we will need to go down the new, enhanced voucher route with an available £4,500 per premise plus a likely County Council top up. So lots to look forward to.........

Project Gigabit - Finally Some News!

Dec 1, 2022

The contract for connecting Cumbria with super fast fibre connections has been awarded to Belfast based Fibrus with the first connections expected in the Spring. Fibrus will have a base and training academy at the Newton Rigg site creating at least 90 apprentice roles for the job in Cumbria. It's not clear yet exactly which areas in Cumbria will be connected as part of this deal but (says he sticking his neck out) I would be surprised if the not spots around Rusland aren't part of the deal.

There is a fall back position for those not covered by the Fibrus contract in that the Government has announced a significant increase in funding for the community based voucher scheme. The £1500 (residential) and £3500 (business) grants are now being replaced by a more generous £4500 grant for both residential and business premises. These figures are likely to be added to from the pot of money which the County Council has earmarked.

For highly remote locations, such as Wasdale, a trial of modern low Earth orbit satellite broadband is going to be conducted.

We're still waiting the detail of where the exact scope of the Fibrus contact: I'll obviously provide updates as soon as I know - likely end of January. Meanwhile you can find details of the announcement on https://www.gov.uk/government/news/major-broadband-rollout-for-cumbria-begins-as-part-of-100-million-plan-to-connect-thousands-of-rural-premises

The big switch-off part two

May 26, 2022

Things are becoming a little clearer and, given that there's so much misinformation floating around, it's probably a good time for an update. Starting with Openreach the infrastructure provider which will stop selling products using the old copper lines when 75% of premises connected to a particular exchange can get a fibre connection. So far, they have announced 552 locations affected including the two pilot areas (Salisbury & Mildenhall). The only 'stop sell' notice in South Lakeland so far is Crosthwaite in 2023.

It's now down to individual communications providers (your ISP if you have a broadband/phone package) to work with their customers to implement the transition. For the vast majority of us, this will simply mean plugging our single phone or DECT base station into the broadband router rather than the wall socket. However the Autumn storms have brought the issue of power back up into sharper focus. With the old copper system (assuming the line itself wasn't damaged) power to the phone socket would keep a single phone going - although the DECT system would fail. We had the additional problem that the mobile network also failed us during the Autumn storms.

BT, which is the largest communications provider have recognised this saying that they underestimated the disruptive effect of the upgrade and has temporarily paused its roll-out to find viable back up solutions and ensure vulnerable customers get the appropriate service. There's also the thorny issue of working with the providers of healthcare pendants and alarm systems to ensure they are modified if necessary to work with the new digital system.

At the moment, the pause only affects BT customers but these are in the majority: Skye and other providers have not yet made any announcements although they face exactly the same challenges.

Two things from this: one is don't panic! Your communications provider is mandated to ensure there is a viable way for you to make the switch from copper to digital. The other is that, assuming the teething problems are sorted, the new system will provide much better quality phone calls.

The big switch-off – what it means for you

Feb 2, 2022

Did you know that the copper phone network your phone is connected to is going to be switched off at the end of 2025? If the answer is ‘no’ then you are in good company as around 90% of people are unaware of what’s probably the biggest project since TV went digital 10 years ago.

Like TV, the phone network is going digital. This will provide a greater range of services, better quality and be less expensive to maintain. They should also in future help protect us from scam calls. Developing the digital phone network is linked to the roll-out of full fibre broadband although the two aren’t on the same timescale (by 2025 the aim is about 85 % full fibre broadband coverage – although it will be less in rural areas like ours). Digital phone services use the same technology as for example, Skype & Zoom called Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP).

You don’t need to do anything now until your provider contacts you. But from next year, traditional phone services will not be offered to new or re-contracting customers and you may be migrated sooner if the copper network develops a serious fault.

In most cases, changing over will not be too difficult involving plugging your phone into your router or via an adapter into your router. There are some tricky issues still to sort out – hence a couple of pilot programmes which have been going on which hopefully will provide some answers. Not all special equipment and services eg alarms & emergency pendants will work - although newer systems should. Most importantly, VOIP services will be powered by your home electricity supply so in the event of a power cut, the service will go down unless there’s a back-up supply. There are obligations placed on providers & I’ll write about this in more detail in a subsequent post.

Update on fibre broadband for Cumbria

Feb 2, 2022

The wheels of Project Gigabit grind slowly but we do have a (slightly) better idea of timescales. It’s expected that the invitation to tender (ITT) will go out anytime now with a contract for Cumbria in place by September – that’s assuming there is a satisfactory bidder. Then there’s planning and surveying – estimated to take until March next year with deployment running through to at least the end of 2025. So no one is going to get full fibre via this scheme anytime soon.

So where does this leave those who are still struggling with slow broadband via ADSL – particularly at the Rusland end of the Parish? The areas of Cumbria which will be covered (‘Intervention areas’) will be included in the ITT so it’s probable that we’ll know this fairly soon. If you’re not included, the voucher scheme will again be made available to you with those currently getting under 30 Mbps also eligible for a top up grant using the County Council’s gainshare funding. From a timescale point of view, the voucher scheme seems the more attractive especially if you have an ‘oven ready’ project to dust off the shelf.

Top Down – for the moment

Oct 23, 2021

I’ve held off for a long time before updating this blog waiting for some clarity as to how we might get gigabit capable connections into all our Parish. Well we are a (little) bit clearer now:

Cumbria will be part of the Project Gigabit Project with between £60m and £102m earmarked to provide full fibre to 66,300 premises. Assuming the procurement process for a regional supplier is successful, there is an August 2022 start date and delivery can be expected early/mid 2023. The maximum potential funding per premise is projected at £1,538. A list of addresses to be included in the contract is expected sometime in December.

So where does this leave us? We can speculate that the addresses to be covered by this contract will be concentrated on areas of greater population density where it is easier and cheaper to develop a full fibre network than in our more spread-out rural area but we may be lucky… .What we do know is that no premises in Cumbria are now eligible for funding through the (more generous) voucher scheme until the addresses have been finalised. So those folks who have put in a lot of work in the Rusland area to get their Broadband upgraded with vouchers via B4RN will have yet another delay.

If the procurement timetable holds, there will be some news at the end of the year although B4RN takes a more pessimistic view saying that an August date is more likely.

Top Down or Bottom Up?

Feb 19, 2021

Let’s start with the bad news: Although the current voucher scheme ends on 31st March, DCMS has told providers that they need to get their voucher requests in to them by 19th February – so the current voucher programme is not now available for the three schemes in the Parish. It was always going to be tight timing anyway with the current quotations from Openreach for each scheme well above that potential grant value. So as far as ‘bottom up’ goes, we’ll have to wait to see what the new voucher scheme will look like. The first bit of good news here is that all parts of our parish are in ‘OFCOM area 3’ – the hardest to reach - and are eligible for future voucher support. Meanwhile work can continue working with Openreach to see if cost savings can be made.

Openreach of course is not the only infrastructure provider but it is by far the largest and it provides a public network for other providers to use. However, B4RN is interested in developing its private network though the voucher scheme and this option is being explored.

So what about the ‘top down’ approach of the Government agency (BDUK) directly contracting infrastructure providers to build in defined procurement areas? Here Cumbria is being used as a pioneer with BDUK consulting on where public investment may be needed to provide Gigabit capable (usually meaning fibre to the premises - FTTP). The consultation is now open for public responses until 9th March. This will determine the areas for Government intervention, i.e. areas where hitherto there’s been no interested Infrastructure provider. The hope is that the first contracts will be awarded before the end of this year. What’s not known is how much interest there will be for providers such as Openreach to bid for these subsidised contracts – but that will become clearer in the next few months.

Looking at our Parish, the map and postcode list in the consultation document indicate unsurprisingly that there is currently no supplier interest in building Gigabit networks here (so called ‘white’ areas) so it looks as if we would fall within an area of intervention. If you are interested the link to the consultation paper can be found on UK Gigabit Programme: Cumbria Public Review

New Year Update

Jan 24, 2021

First of all, looking at the National scene: DCMS have issued a consultation paper ‘Planning for Gigabit Delivery in 2021’. In it, there are proposals to divide the UK into a series of procurement areas with the aim of encouraging infrastructure providers to bid for delivery in each area. Cumbria looks likely to consist of a numbers of small procurement areas which may well include a proportion of overbuilding existing facilities to ensure coverage in the not spots. What’s not clear is how costly or profitable these areas will be: it’s quite likely that no provider will want to bid for many of the Cumbria procurement areas. You can read all about it in the DCMS press release here or find the full version here in pdf format. Away from this top down model, the current community based voucher scheme is likely to continue in some form beyond the end of this financial year with £250m of funding earmarked - subject to treasury approval.

So, if you are wanting Gigabit capable connections there is a choice – wait & see if a provider will come along and build one for you or try to use the voucher funding that is currently available – with Digital Borderlands grant top up if currently receiving less that 30 Mbps download speed. My money is to try to use what we know is available now.....although I know it is not proving easy.

And Now….

Dec 23, 2020

The extraordinary events of this year have underlined the truth of what I wrote in my first posting in June 2013: “Whether you use the internet at home, for your business or are not yet connected, the latest developments in spreading access to superfast broadband … will have a profound effect on how all of us live and work….”

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Wishing you a Happy, Peaceful and above all a Safe Christmas and all the best for 2021.

Colton Superfast Broadband Why it's important and how we can get it......Mike Postle (mike@mpo1.uk)