Wildanet Statement on Withdrawal from Cornwall’s Gigabit Broadband Contracts
Alternative broadband provider Wildanet, which has built a new full fibre (FTTP) network across rural parts of South West England, have today issued a full statement to better explain their reasoning for recently withdrawing from two of the Government’s publicly funded Project Gigabit broadband roll-out contracts in Cornwall.
Just to recap. On 12th February 2026 the government’s Building Digital UK (BDUK) agency confirmed (here) that Wildanet wished to “withdraw” from fully completing the build on two contracts for Cornwall Central (Lot 32.03) and South West Cornwall (Lot 32.02) – both originally awarded back in January 2023 (here).
The provider had already covered c.13,200 premises under these contracts, but the announcement meant they would no longer deliver to the remaining 7,700 contracted premises. But we should point out that Wildanet are continuing, at least for now, to deliver on the core Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly (Lot 32) contract – awarded in April 2024 (here), which was originally valued at £41m to connect 16,800 premises in hard-to-reach rural areas.
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In the meantime, BDUK said they would now be “moving swiftly to put in place alternative plans with other suppliers to connect premises that were due to be covered by these contracts.” This could involve either running a new procurement for the remaining premises or, more likely, trying to find a way of rolling those premises into one of Openreach’s wider Type C (Cross-Regional) deployment contracts (here and here).
The main development today is that Wildanet has finally issued a full statement to better explain why they took the decision, which as expected reflects issues with the rising cost of building in such remote areas (a well known problem).
Wildanet Statement on Project Gigabit Contracts
It was announced on February 12th 2026 that Wildanet had informed Building Digital UK that it wished to withdraw from fully completing the build on two Project Gigabit contracts covering south west and central Cornwall.
Following a review of our Project Gigabit contracts to roll out gigabit-capable broadband to “hard-to-reach” premises in south west and central Cornwall, Wildanet has taken the difficult decision to scale back the build on these. Despite extensive efforts to deliver the programme in full, the cost of delivery in these areas has increased significantly beyond anticipated and it is unfortunately no longer commercially viable for Wildanet to complete these works.
Wildanet has successfully connected around 13,200 premises to date under these contracts, from an original target list of about 19,250, but will no longer deliver to the remaining premises.
Wildanet is only paid for completed and verified connections and will not receive any funding allocated for the build to premises that have not been completed.
Across Cornwall, Wildanet has delivered more than 50,000 new connections through a combination of private investment and publicly funded contracts and we remain a locally based company committed to delivering reliable and sustainable gigabit-capable broadband connectivity across the South West.
Build on Wildanet’s regional (type B) contract for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly continues. BDUK and Wildanet are in discussions to determine if any changes are needed.
The final sentence appears to hint that there may be some changes coming to their core LOT 32 contract too, which could potentially be scaled-back as it’s unlikely to be immune to the same problem of rising build costs. But we’ll have to wait and see.
A number of other alternative networks (e.g. Voneus, FullFibre Ltd. and Freedom Fibre) have also recently withdrawn or scaled-back their Project Gigabit contracts due to similar issues. But other altnets, such as GoFibre and Wessex Internet, have been more successful and recently completed some of their earlier contracts under the same scheme (albeit for different parts of the UK).
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Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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The lot that they bid for and won would include some harder to reach and some easier to reach premises. You take the rough with the smooth, the easier ones balance out the harder ones. They have cherry picked and are now leaving only the very hard to reach premises to… who? The homes affected will now be without a fibre connection for some years longer than if they had completed what they promised. Who will bid for a lot which includes only the hardest to reach? There should be a great big penalty payment. They knew what they signed up for.
Read between the lines. They’ve run out of money and can’t find anyone to lend them more. The shareholders have probably lost most/all of their investment already.
Applying a big financial penalty that pushes them into administration wouldn’t solve the problem. It would likely go unpaid anyway, and risk disruption for the customers they’ve already connected.
BDUK had to take a risk in awarding some contracts to smaller altnets. If they demanded absolute certainty, there would have been fewer firms qualified to bid and the amount of taxpayer subsidy required would be higher.
It’s unfortunate for people living in the affected premises who now face a delay, but they aren’t the only ones still waiting for a decent broadband connection. Many of those still waiting in urban areas (eg. MDUs, direct-in-ground) are in a worse position because they’re not even in scope for a taxpayer-funded scheme yet.
@CJ so it’s just a coincidence that the money ran out on the hard to reach premises not the easier ones. This is a story that we read again and again.
One if the investors, the National Wealth Fund, is publicly funded. We’d be paying the fine.
I note (from regularly checking the Better Internet Dashboard) that Wildanet are still building in suburban Saltash and Torpoint in Cornwall, so I find the claim “run out of money” hard to believe.
Any word on any financial penalty on them for refusing to fulfil their obligations?
No, thought not.
These smaller Giga contracts are a disaster. What kind of due diligence has been done on the ability of these companies to actually deliver for a) the tax payer and b) residents desperate for conectivity? Alt nets dropping like flies after the easy stuff is mopped up. Assume if they do revert to Openreach there will be additional cost to pass the prems just cherry picked as well.
BDUK couldn’t move swiftly to put out a fire in their own building… They are part of the problem for Altnets going bust.
Another department of useless contractors or short term project managers who don’t have a clue how the real world works.
If they could work with providers rather than argue with them for 6 months. Things would move much more swiftly….
is there any clarity on whether they intend to finish the job in places where work has already been done. As I have said before, my parents’ place has had wildanet ducting outside for about a year now, but no other progress. It would seem strange to do the hard/expensive bit and then abandon it.
It’s not what I’d call a hard to serve area either, so much so that Openreach are likely to come in with commercial infill at some point (village is a mix of FTTC and FTTP already), which then begs the question as to why subsidy was ever on offer anyway.
Experience with past cases like this suggests that when a contract stops, it stops cold. If they’d made a plan to complete partially-built areas, then it would have usually been announced.
Project Gigabyte schemes seem to be very poor value and are delivering very little
It doesn’t pay out unless the work is completed. The alternative would be to wait until all commercial build has finished before starting the subsidised builds.
I know full well from a reliable source that they will never step foot here on the Isles of Scilly so when will that be handed back too?
Wildanot lol
Discussions on the street from their contractors when asked the question of the IoS it was discussed that none of the works would be completed, that they would continue to “take the cream” and work within the rules for BDUK. Shocking, glad i never gave them much remit and stuck with OR. No matter how bad at least i got servuce from BTOR.
Currently Starlink satellite is the only solution for those hard to reach areas.
Mobile phone companies could have cashed in from these areas by offering full 5G reliable coverage. Residents would have moved on to Home Broadband(over 5G). Quicker and cheaper deployment while improving mobile coverage for all customers. Minimum network build costs, no costs for home installs, minimum network damage from weather(pretty much only a mast). Rolling Fibre to every Rural home doesn’t pay the Telcos. The volume of customers just isn’t there to pay for the project as well as the maintainance of the network.(especially with all the storms)
What genuinely puzzles me is the process side of this.
These contracts go through formal procurement. Financial robustness, delivery modelling, funding arrangements and contingency planning are assessed pre-award. That’s standard in any public tender process — especially one of this scale and political visibility.
But equally, bidders aren’t passive in that process. They conduct their own due diligence. They build their own cost models. They forecast civils risk, supply chain pressures, inflation exposure and contingency buffers before submitting a price.
That’s just basic tender discipline.
Hard-to-reach rural builds in Cornwall are not an unknown variable. Low premise density, long spine runs, complex civils — that’s the nature of the lot. Those risks don’t suddenly appear two years into delivery.
So I’m genuinely trying to understand how a contract that was financially modelled, stress-tested and competitively priced becomes commercially unviable mid-delivery.
Either:
• the risk profile has materially changed beyond anything reasonably foreseeable
• or the original cost modelling was too optimistic
• or the contingency allowances weren’t sufficient
None of those are comfortable conclusions in a publicly funded procurement environment.
This isn’t about blame — it’s about how the risk framework was structured and what that means for future lots.
Because if the hardest premises are consistently the ones left behind, then something in the modelling or lot design isn’t working as intended.
Be interesting Mark if you could get the figures from all LOTS failed under similar circumstances and reasons.