A Brief Story of How One UK Village Got Stuck in Broadband Limbo

Across the country, you’ll find many rural villages that have fought and been successful in getting a gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband ISP network installed, often with the help of the Government’s voucher scheme. But sometimes even success stories can hit roadblocks, leaving locals stuck in limbo.

In this case, we’re going to take a quick look at the tale of Puddington in West Cheshire (England), which is home to almost 400 people. Back in March 2018 we reported that a small group of local volunteers had banded together (here) to start the B4RNCheshire project (part-built by B4RN itself), which aimed to help build a new full fibre network across six communities (Puddington, Burton, Capenhurst and more).

One of the first locations expected to benefit from this build, which began on the same day as the aforementioned announcement, was the village and civil parish community of Puddington. The reason for the deployment was because locals needed faster broadband and Openreach had, at that point, shown no interest in delivering full fibre to the area.

Shortly after this, some locals claimed to have seen Openreach engineers surveying the community and, by the end of 2020, most of nearby Burton had already gained access to Openreach’s full fibre services and work was starting to take place in Puddington. During the same period B4RN had made progress with their own project, reaching the villages and hamlets of Capenhurst, Woodbank, TwoMills and Shotwick.

However, B4RN’s deployment in Puddington only got so far, until they ran into problems with Openreach’s commercial build.

Michael Lee, B4RN’s CEO, told ISPreview.co.uk:

“Prior to starting the Puddington build we completed an initial phase of work which involved building a route in Capenhurst and the preparation works for the Puddington area including a roadside cabinet. At this stage properties in Puddington were showing as voucher eligible, and a B4RN project was viable.

In July 2021, as we prepared to start the next phase of the build, we applied for the remaining vouchers on the Puddington routes. At this point, the voucher applications were rejected on the grounds that the properties concerned were going to be served by commercial build. We challenged this decision with BDUK [Building Digital UK], but we were told that they had verified the commercial build plans.

We spoke with the Puddington volunteer group, explained the voucher situation and explored other options to raise the necessary funds to complete the project. As you know, the B4RN model asks each community we work with to raise investment to cover the gap between the build cost and the projected voucher income. After this meeting the group concluded that they could not see a viable way to raise the funds required and we decided together to regrettably close down the project.”

At this point the situation could be described as somewhat bittersweet because locals were, ultimately, still expecting to get a full fibre network and that’s a good thing. Except that’s not quite what happened. Openreach’s build did, initially, make some progress, but they seem to have only run FTTP to around 25 of the 139 local premises – served by three telecoms poles. Some other poles were left with fibre coiled up near the bottom.

For context. Openreach informed us that they began building Full Fibre to around 25 homes just outside the main village of Puddington back in 2018, but we’ve been informed by the operator that this early work was actually done under the BDUK programme and NOT their commercial build.

The aforementioned work was then completed by June 2019 and, in January 2020 they announced that they’d be building more Full Fibre across the Neston exchange area – which also serves Puddington – under their commercial programme.

However, Openreach appears to indicate below that they didn’t intend to cover the whole village via their commercial plans, which leaves a question mark over why BDUK rejected all of B4RN’s voucher requests for the rest of the village. But we’ll come back to that.

An Openreach spokesperson said:

“When we add an exchange to our delivery plan, we aim to build to as much of that exchange that we can given operational complexity and investment conditions, upgrading as many properties as we can. In Neston (the exchange that serves the village of Puddington), for example, we’ve built to more than 80 per cent of the exchange area. We’re also very clear that we probably won’t be able to reach 100% of the properties and in Neston, like other areas, there remain some properties that are too complex and costly to upgrade commercially right now.

In the Neston exchange area, a number of these are in the village of Puddington. That said, just because a property hasn’t been built to yet, it doesn’t mean we won’t try to reach it in the future. We’re always seeking ways to innovate and reach more homes and businesses.

More generally, we take our legal and regulatory obligations very seriously when making decisions as to where to build. The fact is, we’re building to 25 million homes and businesses across the UK so, as Ofcom recently stated, it’s likely that Openreach ‘will, at some point, deploy fibre in many areas where Altnets have built, or are planning to build, their networks. This is consistent with the strategy we implemented in the Wholesale Fixed Telecoms Market Review (WFTMR) which was intended to promote investment and competition.”

On speaking to BDUK about all this, the government agency confirmed that, in accordance with the strategy used in 2021, the GBVS eligibility criteria in place at the time excluded the whole Neston exchange area from vouchers (including the village of Puddington), which occurred after it had been announced by Openreach as being within their commercial plans.

So far as we can tell, the issue of B4RN’s rejection may thus also stem from BDUK having previously been too focused on postcode or exchange level coverage. Ofcom’s definition of Area 3 (non-competitive areas) was also updated in early 2021 (here), which might have added an extra layer of complexity to all this.

However, BDUK’s eligibility criteria is, today, based on their own surveys of market plans to exclude commercially viable premises at an “individual premises level” (i.e. such issues as the one described above would be less likely to occur again today).

A Government DSIT (BDUK) spokesperson said:

“All Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme applications are considered alongside commercial build plans announced by suppliers at the time. Should commercial rollout plans change, as has happened in West Cheshire, then the areas in scope for Project Gigabit will change accordingly.

We are reviewing our Project Gigabit plan for Cheshire and eligible premises in Puddington that do not end up being reached as part of that will likely fall into scope of the voucher scheme.”

As per DSTI’s comment, the most recent Open Market Review (OMR) in late 2022 (here) shows that the majority of the properties not yet built to are now being classified as “gigabit white“. In other words, no commercial build is now planned for them within the next 3 years, and they’ve thus been included into the Cheshire Lot 17 regional procurement under Project Gigabit.

The situation has left Puddington to be stuck in a state of broadband limbo. Both B4RN and Openreach have done some work in the community, but Openreach ceased their commercial build in the area shortly after starting and B4RN can’t secure new vouchers to finish the area because it’s now in procurement under Project Gigabit, which may or may not result in a contract being awarded to cover the village.

Naturally, locals are feeling a bit cheated, since B4RN were blocked from being able to complete their own build and then Openreach didn’t go further. “The point is that intentionally or unintentionally, a multi-billion pound organisation has comprehensively disenfranchised a small community and the years of hard work they had put in to get themselves better broadband,” said B4RN supporter and local resident, Peter Delaney. In fairness, BDUK’s inability to correctly adjust for the limitations of Openreach’s local build at the time were also part of the problem.

However, it’s worth noting that, aside from Project Gigabit’s plans, other commercial alternative networks (AltNets) are also now known to be exploring the possibility of a commercial build in the area. For example, Freedom Fibre’s recent coverage map (here) appears to include the same area. But that should be taken more as a very rough guide because AltNets may often only reach a small portion of the regions they target.

In fairness to Openreach though, the operator’s rollout plan is so vast – 25 million premises or 80%+ of the UK by December 2026 (some 6.2 million of which will be in rural or semi-rural areas) – that they can’t easily do all of that without creating some issues for smaller projects along the way.