Re: Project Gigabit and CDS - The BHPN refutes the claim that CDS is fully committed to supporting better connectivity for all communities in the region. Devon & Somerset have been excluded from a £5B government funded infrastructure project to get gigabit capable fibre broadband to every home and business in the country. Your parish council can help get this state of affairs reversed - it is not too late but the window of opportunity to achieve this will not last long. This email asks for the help of your parish council by emailing/writing to your MP's, County Councillors and District Councillors asking them to get Devon & Somerset included in Project Gigabit before 2025. On Thursday May 13, the email below together with an attached briefing document dated May 7,was emailed to your parish council by Peter Doyle, Head of External Affairs at Devon County Council. This email was designed to discredit a May 14 public teleconference organised by the Blackdown Hills Parish Network concerning the fact that Devon & Somerset have now been excluded from the first tranche of funding to roll out Project Gigabit before 2025. Project Gigabit is the £5B government investment announced by Boris Johnson in advance of the last General Election which is intended to get Gigabit capable broadband (up to 1,000Mbps) to everyone in the UK via full fibre networks and on March19th, Oliver Dowden, Secretary of State for Digital Culture Media & Sport announced the first areas of the country that will benefit from this investment before 2025. I am sure you will agree with everything that Peter Doyle says about the crucial importance of fast (i.e. full fibre) broadband connectivity for everyone which has been brought into sharp focus by the pandemic but Peter is not correct to say that Devon & Somerset County Councils have done everything they can to make that happen as soon as is possible. In fact the statement that Peter quotes, made by Connecting Devon & Somerset (which acts on behalf of the two county councils) was made in response to a "call for comment" on Project Gigabit by Oliver Dowden, on December 22, 2020 and CDS's response is only a conditional request for Project Gigabit to "start quickly to support our economy and communities"..... "assuming there is no overlap intended with our live contracts delivering gigabit capable solutions". It is not mentioned in Peter's email that Project Gigabit will be contracted out and managed centrally by DCMS from London, unlike the ongoing Superfast broadband contracts across the UK which have all been contracted out and managed locally by county council run bodies like CDS. • Firstly, it is astonishing that CDS (acting on behalf of DCC & SCC) should even think that overlap is intended by DCMS with CDS's live contracts (which are part of their Phase 2 Superfast roll out), because CDS's superfast contracts and Project Gigabit are both state aid to the telecoms industry and CDS and BDUK are both prohibited by the Treasury from using any new state aid funds to compete with existing state funding and any ongoing commercially funded projects. In fact, at this
moment in time a review (called an Open Market Review) is being conducted by DCMS in all the counties where Project Gigabit will be rolled out before 2025 to ensure that there is no overlap. This will be happening in Cornwall, Dorset, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire and Hampshire, who have all been included in the programme, but not in Devon & Somerset. That fact that CDS think overlap may be intended by DCMS suggests CDS do not trust DCMS but it also implies that CDS consider Devon & Somerset to be their "territory" which they don't want any DCMS directly run broadband projects starting in, fearing that DCMS may be intending to overlap the CDS contracts. • Secondly, CDS cannot claim that their live contracts are delivering gigabit capable solutions. They cannot make this claim because CDS superfast contracts only require the companies they have contracted with to deliver a minimum of 30Mbps (Superfast) connection to each property they connect to even though they will certainly have asked those suppliers to supply gigabit capable connections if they can. Companies who choose to deliver Ethernet over fibre connections and install equipment capable of supporting 1,000Mbps, may at some point be able to deliver 1,000Mbps, but they are under no contractual obligation to do so. There are technologies, such as GPON, (often used by BT Openreach), to provide full fibre connections which are not gigabit capable solutions because GPON is the fibre equivalent of a BT telephone "party line" and they split a single fibre between (say) 30 properties. Such technologies meet the requirements of a superfast contract but cannot be considered to be gigabit capable solutions. (If you are of a certain age you will remember that up until the 1980's BT connected analogue telephone customers on party lines which shared one copper twisted pair wire all the way back to the exchange. The problem with such cheap skate systems is that there is no privacy because you would often hear the other party's conversation when you picked up your rotary dial telephone. For GPON, this problem is solved by using encrypting modems which impose additional overhead on your digital traffic, further degrading speed) If this is true, why does Peter Doyle highlight them in his email? In the CDS Stakeholder Briefing may 7 one reason becomes apparent: In their January consultation response, under the section headed "Large procurement areas", CDS claim that "draft large procurements to the south of Bristol or in south and west Devon pose significant risks". They go on to claim that those are risks not only to the commercial broadband plans and CDS contracts in those areas "but also to the value for money of any new large public procurement funded by Government through Project Gigabit." Furthermore, under the section headed "Small procurement areas", "CDS advise that [in their opinion] it would be wise for BDUK [a.k.a. DCMS] to work with CDS to identify areas that would benefit from Project Gigabit investment" and that "live contracts have scope to be added to through the national gigabit programme funds [a.k.a. Project Gigabit] and which may... be a better option to consider to extend reach and accelerate delivery." Remembering that DCMS have already made it clear that Project Gigabit will be contracted out and managed centrally by DCMS, CDS, in their response, are taking
every opportunity to say it is better to get CDS to run Project Gigabit in Devon & Somerset rather than DCMS, even going to the point of saying that the areas DCMS had provisionally identified south of Bristol and in south and west Devon pose significant risks to ongoing CDS contracts, commercial roll out plans and the value for money of any future Project Gigabit contracts. This is far from a ringing endorsement of DCMS's Project Gigabit, nor is it asking how quickly can Project Gigabit be implemented in Devon & Somerset. Rather, It appears to be a desperate attempt to get DCMS to hand Project Gigabit over to CDS as far as the two counties are concerned and if you were Oliver Dowden, would you put Project Gigabit investment in Devon & Somerset after reading this? This is a far cry from the website announcement made by Dorset Council on March 23rd when they heard that their consultation response had secured Project Gigabit funding for Dorset . Dorset Council make it clear that their MP and the Deputy Leader of Dorset Council have worked together and "led months of behind the scenes lobbying for better broadband in Dorset" and that Project Gigabit funding would be directed at the county's hardest to reach and most poorly served areas. In light of CDS's less than positive response to the December 2020 call for comment on Project Gigabit, it begs the question, what lobbying were Devon and Somerset's MP's and the Leaders and Deputy Leaders of Devon & Somerset county councils doing for the last 5 months? Whatever it was, it was not successful and CDS's response clearly challenges the whole premise of Project Gigabit being contracted out and managed by DCMS. Broadband Vouchers (be they for USO, superfast, ultrafast, copper, fibre, domestic or business broadband connections) are loved by central government and local government alike because they transfer the responsibility for contracting with a network company from the state to the consumer, together with all the technical difficulties attached, which consumers have no expertise in at all, while the state does. Dolling out vouchers is all the state have to do for such broadband voucher schemes but how does the consumer decide who to take their voucher to and because very few network companies will connect one property only in a rural area, they force consumers to persuade each other and sign everyone up in a given area with one supplier. Vouchers thus force consumers to do the selling for the network companies, but if the vouchers do not cover the full cost of putting a network in place for the number of properties that agree to participate and the network company are not putting in enough investment of their own, it leaves those consumers having to find the cash to bridge whatever funding gap remains and that can be many many thousands of pounds. BT also love vouchers because, being the owner of the UK's largest telecoms network, they are the most likely recipient of such vouchers, but even they have problems getting enough people in a community to bring their vouchers to them - as demonstrated in Cullompton recently, where they enlisted Neil Parish MP to sell the scheme to the community for them when he stood alongside Clive Selley, CEO of BT in March . (Note Network companies are those who install broadband networks and own the cables and cabinets and should not be confused with ISP's who deliver broadband services over those networks and are likely not to own any of the hardware on the network. i.e. ISP's are typically resellers of other companies' network services)
At the end of the May 7, CDS Stakeholders briefing on Project Gigabit and CDS, CDS state that "CDS has delivered connectivity to more homes and businesses than any other broadband programme in England" and credits that statement to DCMS. DCC, SCC & CDS should note that their taxpayers were not born yesterday and are well aware that because the two counties decided to run the broadband programme together, the figure for the number of connections achieved should be at least twice the number of every other county council broadband programme, run by individual county councils ..... but they aren't, because Devon and Somerset are amongst the slowest counties in England to roll out their own state aided CDS superfast programme and are now taking every opportunity to challenge the value for money and impact on their own superfast roll out of what will be the DCMS centrally run, state aided Project Gigabit roll out. Peter Doyle goes on to highlight an attached briefing paper for MP's on broadband coverage in the Blackdown Hills AONB (not available on the CDS website) which claims that 20.4% of premises in the Blackdowns can order a full fibre connection now and that were the Blackdown Hills a single parliamentary constituency (rather than parts of three), Blackdown Hills fibre availability would be just below that of Manchester and above that of Cambridge, Reading and Tottenham constituencies. This is not disputed but Peter cannot claim this has anything to do with CDS. The Blackdown Hills AONB have 20.4% full fibre availability because Gigaclear Ltd chose to demonstrate their commitment to the two counties before they were bid for the five CDS contracts which they won at the end of 2016, by putting their own commercial Ethernet over fibre network in place, starting in Yarcombe and running through Rawridge, Upottery, Smeatharpe, Churchinford, Churchstanton, Clayhidon, Ford Street, Wellington and then north to Wiveliscombe. People in these areas have benefited from gigabit capable broadband, but many people in the remaining 79.6% of the Blackdown Hills AONB continue to struggle with copper broadband connections often on very long copper wires running back to the exchange without any intermediate cabinets. In some areas those wires are aluminium, not even copper. Whilst they are not responsible for the 20.4% full fibre coverage in the Blackdown Hills AONB, CDS trumpet this as a major achievement but when the UK has the third least number of properties connected by full fibre in Europe , it is nothing to be proud of. CDS seem to have forgotten that on December 5th 2015, they stood in front of a room full of network companies to announce their third attempt at finding suppliers for all of the two counties excluding the National Parks, describing it as the "The biggest infrastructure build opportunity for rural communities in England". They stated that successful network companies would be required to deliver 95% superfast connectivity across the whole of the two counties by the end of 2017". This was before they terminated those contracts and had to embark on a fourth contracting round which was completed by December 2020 with roll out now not due to complete until the end of 2024....not 2017! It is clear that a turf war has gone on between CDS and DCMS over who rolls out Project Gigabit in the two counties, but DCMS have drawn a line under that by excluding Devon & Somerset from the first tranche of funding before 2025. Devon & Somerset taxpayers are caught in the cross fire here and as a result many people in Devon & Somerset will now have to wait until after 2025 before their broadband service is improved.
For Devon & Somerset residents the possibility of getting gigabit capable broadband from a contract let and managed by DCMS rather than CDS may appear an improvement, but in March, when Oliver Dowden announced the first Project Gigabit contract areas (the day before purdah for the May 6 local elections halted communications between Councils and the electorate), other things were happening in DCMS which do not bode well for anyone hoping to benefit from Project Gigabit: Both the CEO and Project Director of BDUK (the DCMS department responsible for all UK broadband programmes), quit! The Project Director has been responsible for superfast roll out and the CEO has been responsible for the design of Project Gigabit. Their departure in the same month that the Minister announced Project Gigabit on March 19 suggests (to paraphrase Horatio in Shakespeare's Hamlet) "Something is not right in the state of DCMS". Equally alarming is the fact that the CEO and Project Director roles in BDUK have both been assumed on a temporary basis by the Executive Chair of BDUK who is an ex banker and has previously been responsible for broadband voucher schemes. This may mean that vouchers become the dominant way that all future broadband is rolled out in the UK. To quote Superintendent Hastings from Line of Duty's AC12: "Jesus, Mary and the wee donkey!" Your parish council can help get this state of affairs reversed - it is not too late but the window of opportunity to achieve this will not last long. Please write to you MP's, County Councillors and District Councillors asking them to get Devon & Somerset included in Project Gigabit before 2025. Also, please sign our petition to get Devon & Somerset included in Project Gigabit before 2025. It is a scandalous that Devon & Somerset taxpayers are being excluded from a major UK infrastructure programme because of a turf war between central and local government, both of which are run by the same political party. Thank you for your support. Heather Stallard, Chair, Blackdown Hills Parish Network: Email: blackdownhillsonline@gmail.com http://blackdownsonline.org.uk/
From: Peter Doyle <peter.doyle@devon.gov.uk> Date: Thu, 13 May 2021 at 15:56 Subject: Connecting Devon and Somerset To: Dear colleagues, Connecting Devon and Somerset fully understands that broadband is a vital resource and understandably, therefore, a hot topic for anyone still waiting for good connectivity.
The Covid pandemic has further underlined the crucial importance of digital connectivity and, again, understandably sharpened the focus on what’s happening with the roll-out of full fibre and when will communities be connected. In recent days incorrect claims have been made on social media and elsewhere that Connecting Devon and Somerset (and Devon and Somerset County Councils) asked the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) to delay the Government’s Project Gigabit investment in Devon and Somerset. In actual fact, in a response to the Department’s pre-launch consultation, CDS said: “In terms of when would we like the procurements to start – assuming there is no overlap intended with our live contracts delivering gigabit capable solutions, we would say quickly to support our economy and communities.” A briefing note summarising DCMS’ consultation prior to launching Project Gigabit, the CDS’ response and the context of current and planned coverage in the CDS region accompanies this email. The briefing is also available publicly on the CDS website here. The briefing includes links to the DCMS consultation document and the CDS response in full. Incorrect claims have also been made that the County Councils promote a BT voucher scheme. They do not, nor does CDS, and in fact BT does not have such a scheme. The County Councils via Connecting Devon and Somerset have only ever promoted either, in the past, CDS’ own voucher scheme, or more recently the Government’s Gigabit Voucher scheme. In close liaison with the Government’s Building Digital UK agency, CDS provides practical help, advice and support to communities where residents are considering taking advantage of the Government’s Gigabit Voucher scheme. To illustrate the point, vouchers have already paid for 6,750 homes in the CDS region to be connected to full fibre broadband and the total investment is currently over £9 million in our patch. In the vast majority of cases these voucher schemes have not required financial contributions from residents. CDS operates a Community Challenge Programme, funded by partner local authorities, that can provide top-up funding where the total value of vouchers is not enough to pay for a community to be connected. I have also attached a short briefing recently prepared for Members of Parliament summarising current and planned broadband coverage in the Blackdowns AONB. If your councils have any questions about these briefings, current or planned broadband coverage or the Gigabit Voucher Scheme, please do let me know. CDS will be very happy to assist. CDS (and its local authority partners) are fully committed to supporting better connectivity for all communities in the region.
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