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One year on: Government broadband pilots stalled

By Stewart Mitchell

Posted on 9 Dec 2011 at 08:41

The tortuously slow pace of broadband progress in rural Britain has been revealed in a document published by the Government's Broadband Delivery UK team.

The UK Government has set aside £530 million to fund projects supposed to improve fibre in about a third of the UK where “the market” is not expected to see a profit in rolling out fibre or other Next Generation Access technologies.

Yet more than a year after the programme got under way with pilot projects in Cumbria, Herefordshire, North Yorkshire and the Highlands and Islands, campaigners say little has changed and Broadband Delivery UK admits the process is taking longer than expected.

A complicated procurement process, inter-county negotiations and infighting between potential suppliers means no project is yet up and running.

According to BDUK, all the pilots remain in procurement and it is planning to award contracts and commence implementation next year.

All the pilots took significantly longer to commence their procurements than was originally envisaged prior to detailed planning

“Project mobilisation takes time,” BDUK said in its Broadband Delivery Programme: Superfast Pilots - Lessons Learnt Report. “All the pilots took significantly longer to commence their procurements than was originally envisaged prior to detailed planning.”

According to BDUK, a lack of funding and dedicated staff on pilot projects were to blame for the slow progress.

“Some of the pilots were operating within financial constraints and therefore the project teams were created by adjusting current workloads, seconding staff and creating the resource capability to make appointments,” the report said.

“There was also some lack of awareness at the time of developing the original applications for pilots of the scale of the challenge or the resources required to undertake the task.”

Financial risk

The document laid out what the BDUK had learnt from the process, but there are real fears that the slow progress and top-heavy administrative process risk seeing the £530 million wasted or not reaching the areas it was designed to help.

"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 haven't seen any improvement," Alice Barnard, chief executive of the Countryside Alliance, told the BBC.

"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 remain all but worthless.”

Other campaigners have told PC Pro that the process is also being slowed down by placing the majority of the procurement responsibility on county councils that have little experience of organising large scale infrastructure projects.

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User comments

"Programme: Superfast Pilots"

Superfast takes a long time...

By greemble on 9 Dec 2011

Crystal Ball not necessary

What does it take for you all to learn? Government does EVERYTHING badly. Because we expect it to take care of our every need is why we have become a 3rd rate country. The only thing that government should be doing is keeping us safe from crime on our streets and stopping us being invaded from abroad.

Therefore this article could have been written WITHOUT hindsight back when these pilots were being proposed.

By Alperian on 9 Dec 2011

if it like this now...

There problems now just wait until some of it installed and then there a fault and it stops working

Mark

By mprltd on 9 Dec 2011

I wonder how much of the £530 million is left after a year of bureaucracy and red tape.

By peterm2k on 9 Dec 2011

NOT 'The Government'

Didn't you guys (Alperian) ever learn?

This is quite clearly NOT HMG, but some Agency a la 'Borders Agency' - a quango, but without the accountability that quangos had.

The LibCons are implementing this model far and wide, so that when (not 'if') their flawed plans bomb-out they can't be blamed (again see Border Agency).

As to the paltry £530M that's all going to be spent to buy-in the Private Sector consultants and other vultures, and in wrangling between suppliers.

Makes the MoD look positively efficient.

By wittgenfrog on 9 Dec 2011

I don't care...

...whether it is the Government or a Quango.

It is our (i.e. taxpayers) money they are wasting.

Just remember that spending other people's money is easy.

By jontym123 on 9 Dec 2011

Predictable and predicted ...

... as you say Alperian. The tragedy is that there IS a way of doing this properly that I suggested at the time. You place a collective universal service obligation on the industry as a whole and create a not-for-profit "service provider of last resort". This provider charges its losses back to the other providers in proportion to the number of customers each provider has. Everyone pays slightly more for service, but everyone gets it and most still benefit from a competitive market.
-
This model works well for any service you want to be universal without making it an inevitably inefficient and corrupt public monopoly.

By JohnAHind on 9 Dec 2011

@JohnAHind

All very well, but where's the profit for the Tories' business mates?

All this crap can be traced back to the Private='Good', State='Bad' dogma of thatcher\Blair. What you're suggesting is pretty rational but it isn't ideologically 'pure' enough. It has a whiff of (whisper it) 'Socialism'.

By wittgenfrog on 9 Dec 2011

'Business mates'

And I don't mean 'entrepreneurs' who set-up and run real businesses.

I mean accountants, consultantants, and all the other hangers on that support the Looney Right in this country.

By wittgenfrog on 9 Dec 2011

@wittgenfrog

It was also accountants, consultants and other hangers on that supported the Looney Left's idea of an integrated IT system for the NHS (which was a colossal waste of taxpayers money and was instigated as a vanity project by the last (Labour) administration).

As soon as it comes to government (or, at a local level, council) of whatever political colour one can guarantee wastage on a scale that no commercial enterprise (i.e. real business) would ever tolerate.

Yet for such failures no heads ever seem to roll on either left or right leaning parties.

By jontym123 on 9 Dec 2011

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