The Chancellor of the UK Government, Jeremy Hunt, has today announced the Spring 2023 Budget, which sadly made no mention of any extra support for gigabit broadband or 5G mobile deployments. But the new “full expensing” measure could help to bring down the cost of some related plant and machinery (capital expenses).

Firstly, we weren’t expecting to see any major “new” broadband and mobile related infrastructure funding announcements from the Government this time around, which is because they’re already running two such schemes. The first one is their £1bn Shared Rural Network project (progress update), which aims to extend geographic 4G based mobile (mobile broadband) coverage to 95% of the UK by end of 2025 (it will help 5G too).

The second one is their £5bn Project Gigabit programme, which aims to make gigabit-capable (1Gbps+) broadband ISP networks available to at least 85% of UK premises by the end of 2025 and then “nationwide” by 2030 (Winter 2023 Progress Update). The project consists of several support schemes, including vouchers (£210m), funding to extend Dark Fibre in the public sector (£110m) and gap-funded deployments with suppliers (rest of the funding).

Read the full story here.

Rural UK broadband ISP Gigaclear has announced that their ongoing £38m investment to expand their UK Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network into Buckinghamshire (England), which has already covered around 19,000 premises, is being extended to reach 1,700 homes in the village of Great Missenden. But they’re not alone.

The first deployment work in Great Missenden is due to get underway in February 2023, and it will then join several other locations in the county where Gigaclear has already built, or are building, including Aston Clinton, Naphill, Chesham Bois, Great Missenden, Haddenham and Buckingham. A number of other locations in the region are also being planned for the future.

NOTE: The Infracapital-backed ISP is investing up to £700m to reach 500,000 UK premises by the end of 2023 (they’ve already covered 380,000).

However, the move is interesting, since a number of other alternative and gigabit-capable broadband networks, such as via Swish Fibre and Trooli, are also deploying across the same area. Not to mention Openreach’s FTTP build and the fact that F&W Networks is nearby doing the same.

Read the full story here.

The fifth contract awarded under the Government’s £5bn Project Gigabit broadband rollout scheme – worth £36 million – has today been handed to UK ISP Wildanet, which will upgrade connectivity for more than 19,250 hard-to-reach homes and businesses across rural parts of Cornwall in South West England.

At present, Wildanet is already in the process of deploying their gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network – backed by an investment of £50m from the Gresham House British Strategic Investment Infrastructure Fund (BSIF) – to reach rural premises across rural parts of Cornwall and Devon (they also operate a slower fixed wireless network). But the operator has, thus far, been quite vague about how much progress they’ve made.

NOTE: Around 73% of UK premises can already access a gigabit network (c. 45% via just FTTP) – see here.

By comparison, Project Gigabit aims to extend 1Gbps capable (download speeds) networks to reach at least 85% of UK premises by the end of 2025, before hopefully achieving “nationwide” coverage (c. 99%) by around 2030 (here). Commercial investment is expected to deliver around 80% of this, which leaves the government’s scheme to focus on tackling the final 20% (mostly rural and some sub-urban areas), where the private sector alone often fails. The project is technology neutral, so it can be delivered via either “full fibre” FTTP, Hybrid Fibre Coax (HFC) or fixed wireless access (e.g. 5G), but FTTP favoured.

Read the full story here.

Cityfibre has today confirmed that they’ve begun the construction phase of their £50m project – supported by civil engineering firm Lanes-i – to deploy a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network to “almost every home and business” in the Kent (England) town of Maidstone.

So far as we can tell, most of the operator’s initial build will be focused upon the Allington area of Kent, but they’ll face plenty of competition from gigabit-capable rivals. Virgin Media already has strong coverage of the town, while both Openreach and Netomnia (YouFibre) are also deploying their own full fibre in the same location. Some limited coverage also exists from Hyperoptic and OFNL, while Trooli has a nearby rollout in Loose.

NOTE: Cityfibre is supported by ISPs like Vodafone, TalkTalk (Future Fibre), Zen Internet, Giganet, iDNET and more, but they aren’t all live or available in every area yet.

The build forms part of Cityfibre’s wider effort to cover up to 8 million premises (funded by c.£2.4bn in equity and c.£4.9bn debt) – across around 285 cities, towns and villages (c.30% of the UK) – by the end of 2025 (here). So far, the operator has already covered 2 million UK premises, including 1.8m Ready For Service (RFS) via ISPs (here).

Read the full story here.

Leicester-based UK broadband ISP Gigabit Networks, which until now had seemed to focus on connecting premises across the Midlands of England via CityFibre‘s full fibre (FTTP) network, has now confirmed that their services will also be available via FullFibre Limited‘s gigabit-capable network.

FullFibre Ltd typically deploys its network as a wholesale platform via Fibre Heroes for other ISPs to harness (i.e. consumers should visit that site to check coverage). The operator is currently targeting 80+ towns (34 are already in-build) across parts of 11 different counties (e.g. Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Herefordshire and Gloucestershire). At present, their aim is to reach “at least” 500,000 premises by 2025.

Gigabit Networks will thus join several other ISPs in offering services over FullFibre’s new Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network, including the likes of Air Broadband, BeFibre, Gigabit Networks, iDNET, Link Broadband, Merula, OctaPlus, Redline, Squirrel and ZYBRE.

Read the full story here.