Lincolnshire Broadband Programme Update – 31st October 2015
Steve Brookes is Programme Manager at Lincolnshire County Council responsible for the Superfast Broadband project.
Status
Total Homes Passed (THP) at the time of writing is 137,817 and we are on target to meet the end of Quarter target of 144,794 THP. There are currently 626 cabinets upgraded and a total of 704 cabinets stood to date, out of a total 801 applicable to this project.
The Quarterly targets within this project are very demanding and amongst the highest in the UK in terms of BDUK projects and to ensure we continue to hit target, BT has brought in additional resource from local companies. Both Openreach and LCC are confident that we will hit the end of Quarter target, as we have done at every Quarterly Milestone to date.
Take Up across the Project Intervention Area is now 19.86% as of September 2015, so we are confident that by today’s date, we will have hit 20%. Whilst the rate of Take Up can be described as a steady, consistent growth, we have pointed out that the huge numbers of THP in Lincolnshire per Quarter does have the constant effect of slewing the numerator/denominator ratio adversely towards Quarter end when the vast majority of THP are completed.
The overall growth is encouraging and a planned marketing drive starting on 1st November involving press, radio and bus advertising, should drive numbers further forward.
At this point in time, BT has released an advance of £4.6M back to Lincolnshire County Council under the claw-back agreement within the contract. This in itself is testament to the confidence they feel regarding take across the county as claw-back under the contract is scheduled to be paid on a 2 yearly basis across the 10 years from project start. This money will be fully reinvested into the broadband programme to further enhance Superfast broadband coverage.
We are in discussion with BT regarding the early use of some underspend from the current project and we are pleased to note that they have agreed to look at 20 structures (localities presumably Tref) initially with a view to establishing feasibility/cost etc. and then, hopefully moving to an early deployment. LCC has been compiling an ongoing list of communities that do not benefit from the initial deployment, with a view to potentially dealing with them under Phase 2 or via underspend from the current project. Value for Money and coverage will be the key drivers here.
Trefor Davies adds
There are 156k homes in the intervention area, based on the assumption that 50% of county was already covered. It was initially estimated that 76% would get superfast broadband. The project is currently running higher than this at 83%. This figure does fluctuate from quarter to quarter – depending on mix of scenarios in each community. For some cabinets only perhaps 60% of THP will be able to get coverage but others can be in the nineties. Overall 17% of homes passed are not going to get superfast broadband ie above 24Megs.
Phase 2 of the project, which has not yet been announced, will look to pass 6,000 premises with fibre of which 4,081 should get superfast broadband. an element of this will be fttp although BT will only deploy this where it makes sense to do so, the cost of provisioning here being the barrier – eg new greenfield site with new ducts is easy brownfield sites where the ducts can often be blocked, not so easy.
In this post we are reporting on progress. This is not a discussion on the pros and cons of a technology or a complaint as to why can’t everyone get the best speeds.
About Steve Brookes
Steve was with BT for 20 years, ultimately managing teams in their external network. From there he spent several years in Europe building a European Fibre ring and following that was with Fujitsu before programme managing the Fibrespeed network across North Wales. Prior to working for LCC, he was a consultant to the Saudi Telecom Company on the deployment of FTTH, before moving on to be the Fibre consultant to the Abu Dhabi Government on a multi million dollar tourism programme.
Other posts in Lincolnshire broadband week:
Philip Little of Bluecube Move to the cloud accelerated by superfast broadband http://www.trefor.net/2015/11/12/cloud-services-in-lincolnshire/
Intro to day 4 by Tref http://www.trefor.net/2015/11/12/today-on-trefor-net-how-people-are-using-their-new-superfast-broadband-connection/
Broadband for all by Tref http://www.trefor.net/2015/11/11/broadband-for-all-our-rights-to-access-utilities/
Could we have a B4RN in Lincolnshire (B4RL) http://www.trefor.net/2015/11/11/broadband-for-all-our-rights-to-access-utilities/
Gigaclear Ultrafast broadband in Lincolnshire by CEO Matthew Hare http://www.trefor.net/2015/11/10/gigaclear-ultrafast-broadband-in-lincolnshire/
BT fibrebroadband Managing Director Bill Murphy discusses superfast broadband progress in Lincolnshire http://www.trefor.net/2015/11/09/bt-superfast-broadband-lincolnshire/
Lincolnshire broadband programme update by Steve Brookes http://www.trefor.net/2015/11/09/lincolnshire-broadband-programme-update/