New Year Update
Jan 24, 2021First 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.