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

Top Down or Bottom Up?

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