2011 Round-up: Broadband rollout in the UK

How is the government's plan for a superfast broadband network playing out?

It has been a turbulent year for broadband in the UK. 2011 has seen government and network operators make noticeable progress in establishing effective roadmaps for the future, while suffering blows that could hinder rollout of Britain's digital infrastructure long term.

The UK's rollout of next generation broadband access set out to create, as Chancellor George Osborne put it in his Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) last October, the best superfast network in the whole of Europe by 2015.

Osborne said he would allocate £530m of government money up until 2015 to ensure that 90 per cent of households in each local authority could access super-fast broadband.

As part of the Review, Osborne announced four pilot projects, in the Highlands and Islands, North Yorkshire, Cumbria and Hertfordshire, which were set to be examples of how the public and private sectors could work together to ensure broadband services in hard-to-reach rural areas.

The projects were allocated between £5m and £10m each and the local authorities were charged with sourcing suppliers to begin implementations.

This was followed by a further tranche of funding, worth £50m, made available in May to Wiltshire, Norfolk, Devon and Somerset, for the next batch of pilots.

However, these pilots were brought into question in December when a freedom of information request, submitted by the Countryside Alliance, highlighted that the millions of pounds distributed to the local authorities has not yet been spent.

The information showed that Highlands and Islands were yet to spend any money at all, while Cumbria spent just £20k, Herefordshire £50k and Yorkshire £500k.

The Countryside Alliance argued that while the government's allocation of money was commendable, it had not provided enough support and guidance to make sure each local authority was able to put network rollout plans into action.

"It has been over a year since these pilots were set up and the people who live in areas with no or unreliable broadband coverage have not seen any improvement," said Alice Barnard, chief executive of the Countryside Alliance.

2011 Round-up: Broadband rollout in the UK

How is the government's plan for a superfast broadband network playing out?

"Unless more is done to simplify the process of acquiring and implementing rural broadband projects, the digital divide will continue to grow and the money pledged by the coalition will be worth nothing."

Concern about the progress of the pilots was deepened by news that Cable & Wireless and Fujitsu had pulled out of the bidding process to secure funding for rollout of a network in the Highland and Islands, claiming that "additional investment" would be required to make it a realistic project.

Problems for the UK's broadband network did not end there. In addition to issues with the pilots, ISP Geo Networks also pulled out of the Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) framework in November, claiming that access to BT's ducts and poles - infrastructure that ISPs can connect to in order to provide broadband in hard to reach areas - was too expensive.

The BDUK framework is the government's list of approved suppliers available to roll out networks in rural areas across the UK.

This announcement followed months of controversy around the pricing of BT's infrastructure, where its initial prices, released in January, faced a backlash from network operators for being too high, and consequently were revised down in October. However, the revision was not sufficient to ensure Geo Networks' commitment to BDUK.

Chris Smedley, CEO at Geo Networks, released a damning statement arguing that BT's physical infrastructure access (PIA) prices are too high for smaller suppliers.

"While pricing may have been reduced for the current PIA product (still not far enough in our view), the real issue is that it can only be used for providing the final drop from local exchange to a residential broadband consumer's house.

"PIA cannot be used for the far more costly business of crossing the long distances in rural areas to get to these remote communities - making the idea of being able to build new fibre connections within them faintly ludicrous. Quite simply, our business case does not stack up because of these restrictions," said Smedley.

It wasn't all bad news for broadband in 2011. For example, BT announced at the end of October that its plans to rollout fibre broadband to two-thirds of UK premises by 2015 had been brought forward by a year to the end of 2014.

BT said that it was going to ensure it kept to the new timetable by recruiting a further 520 engineers, most of whom would be ex-armed forces, to assist with the deployment, in addition to £300m of investment being brought forward.

"The acceleration reflects the success of the programme to date and is a testament to the hard work and innovation of our people," said Ian Livingstone, CEO of BT Group.

Meanwhile, Wales managed to successfully secure a significant chunk of the government's £530m broadband funds, after shadow business minister, and MP for Wrexham, Ian Lucas attacked the Chancellor by saying that "the licence fee is paid by taxpayers in Wales in exactly the same way as it is across the UK, yet the government has not guaranteed any money for Wales".

This resulted in an announcement in July from Culture and Media Secretary Jeremy Hunt who confirmed that nearly £60m of government funding would be allocated to Wales, which exceeds that given to all other areas to date.

This announcement was well received, given that only 31 per cent of premises in Wales have access to super-fast broadband - the lowest proportion in the UK.

"Today's announcement will ensure broadband take-up and speed can be significantly improved, benefiting individuals and businesses," said Cheryl Gilan, secretary of state for Wales.

2011 has been a year in which the groundwork for achieving government targets around broadband has been laid, with most announcements around frameworks being established, money being allocated and suppliers being chosen.

Once the pilots are under way and suppliers start to agree with BT about how to best use its infrastructure to implement networks in hard to reach areas, the government, businesses and citizens will have a much clearer idea as to whether or not broadband for all is a realistic option by the government's deadline of 2015.