Top Down – for the moment
Oct 23, 2021I’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.