BDUK Projects

I'm looking at getting involved in the local Northumberland BDUK project and in preparation am doing some research.

Northumberland has a budget of £7m from the BDUK project which I believed has to be matched by the private sector leaving the council with a final budget of £14m.

Dividing £14m amongst 73 exchanges leaves each exchange with around £180,000. Nine of these exchanges are already planned or have FTTC services and so may not need any or certainly require less funding.

The biggest issue with our local area is that in some cases FTTC will not be viable as some villages are served by one cabinet that is a good 1200 - 1600m away which means FTTC would barely be faster than current ADSL2+ services.

The exchange (Wylam - NEWYL) presently servers ~1800 Premises of which most are within a 4-5km radius. The area is relatively rural and the roads between Horsley and Heddon (North of Wylam) has a grass verge running most of the way meaning installation of fibre ducts would be somewhat easier.

I was relatively young (8 or 9 years old) however I remember that our village was widely ignored by BT as not viable for Broadband however the community got together and showed the demand was there. It's likely that there is demand for a fibre based service, especially in Heddon where lines are particularly slow (~1-3Mb/s).

Are there any examples of successful FTTP rollouts under BDUK. I remember that ICS project being a bit of a failure so was wondering what the general picture was coming from various rollouts.

I understand that most projects haven't got past planning stages yet although I believe a few counties have began rollouts.

You will NOT find any example of FTTC or FTTP builds from BDUK projects, because none of them have delivered a connection yet. The first have just awarded the contract, but state aid approval from EU is delaying actual work.

Cornwall which is NOT BDUK, but independent, is doing things like adding cabinets for exchange only lines, and also deploying FTTP into the mix.

At 1200 to 1500m you should still manage a good 15 Mbps from FTTC, which is a LOT better than you get from ADSL2+ at 4 to 5km.

BDUK projects are NOT about 100% of people getting a connection of 24 Mbps or faster either. In fact the project setup does not specify whether the >24Mbps is headline, or actual experienced speed.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

You will NOT find any example of FTTC or FTTP builds from BDUK projects, because none of them have delivered a connection yet. The first have just awarded the contract, but state aid approval from EU is delaying actual work.

Cornwall which is NOT BDUK, but independent, is doing things like adding cabinets for exchange only lines, and also deploying FTTP into the mix.

At 1200 to 1500m you should still manage a good 15 Mbps from FTTC, which is a LOT better than you get from ADSL2+ at 4 to 5km.

BDUK projects are NOT about 100% of people getting a connection of 24 Mbps or faster either. In fact the project setup does not specify whether the >24Mbps is headline, or actual experienced speed.

I'm 3.5km from the exchange and get 10Mbps on ADSL2+ so the monthly fee of fibre £10-15 more than most ADSL connections wouldn't be worth it for most.

Looking at the councils scope for Northumberland the plan appears to be 85% will get a mix of FTTC and FTTP. The rest will get a wireless solution while the final 2% in uber-rural Northumberland will have to make do with either wireless or satellite.

I'm actually having a meeting with the project manager in a week or so hopefully so I'll possibly discuss the plans then. Would a Non-Openreach project use BT cabinets, because if another company were to supply the area and required their own cabs I imagine they'd move it towards the village rather than 1.5km away. They can put it in my garden if they want.

The funding for BDUK has a lot of limitations on how it can be spent. I believe the idea is that it is spent through the framework and there are a very small number of suppliers on that framework. If work was to be done via anyone other than these suppliers then I would assume it may have to be with funding outside of the BDUK pot.

In reply to a post by ian72:

The funding for BDUK has a lot of limitations on how it can be spent. I believe the idea is that it is spent through the framework and there are a very small number of suppliers on that framework. If work was to be done via anyone other than these suppliers then I would assume it may have to be with funding outside of the BDUK pot.

Ah, so it effectively revolves around the fact that only BT Openreach and VM/Fujitsu were the only real suppliers and now that VM/F have pulled out almost all the contracts are going to Openreach which is why the EU are getting all iffy over the whole thing.

That's how I'm seeing it anyway.