In a gift to the critics of the BDUK projects, the Culture Secretary Maria
Miller has requested an urgent meeting in Brussels for today (8th Nov 2012) to
express concerns over delays on receiving the blanket State Aid Approval for
the BDUK projects.
The Financial Times covers the story in depth and highlights
that some of the delay has been down to slow presentation of data from the BDUK
to the EU mandarins, with the last piece of information not presented until
October. As things stand now the final rubber stamp that will unleash the
avalanche of work that the BDUK projects will produce is expected at the end of
November 2012, though we suspect that local authorities will are possibly happy
with the delays as this gives them more planning time.
North Yorkshire which decided to file its own EU State Aid application
already has its approval and is expected to be the first area to deliver a
connection, and as we have not seen lots of politicians huddled around an iPad
on TV yet, we presume this has not happened.
Some attribute the delays to the lack of open access to dark fibre in the
project plans put forward, but while some projects across Europe offer this, it
does not look to be a show stopper. Openreach is offering wholesale access, and
while this access draws criticism it has been adopted by TalkTalk and Sky (the
majority of other retail FTTC/P offerings via Openreach using BT Wholesale),
which in terms of names the public have heard of is many more than some other
open access projects that exist in the UK.
So will the UK now miss its 90% of properties able to receive a superfast
service, and 100% able to get a 2 Mbps service? Well the question really is
what exact date are we chasing in 2015? Is it May 2015? 1st Jan 2015 or 31st
December 2015? We believe a date of around May/June so that politicians can use
the success of the project as a campaigning point at the next General Election,
of course the high profile complaining about EU delays will provide an easy
escape route if the projects are delayed into 2016.
In one respect the 2 Mbps USC deadline has already been missed, as Labour
wanted this target met in 2012, only in July 2010 did the Con/Dem coalition
adjust the date to a vague 2015.
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“Maria Miller is frustrated that EU red tape is holding up the delivery of broadband in the UK, infrastructure that is essential to the country’s economic growth”
Does she really believe that? Is it not more likely that the decision to give all the BDUK money to the one and only ‘non-phantom’ bidder might be a problem for Brussels?
It is very much like BT the dates change to suit as does what the target acually is.
They’ve brought their own dates forward again Bob, notice you didn’t comment on that when it came up 🙂 wonder why?
Given that the UK government knew that Ash dieback was on the way for 20 years and yet were still too late to do anything productinve I am not holding my breath on any government target being met for broadband.
@ mike, if any other EU telco’s want to tender thats up to them, like Fujitsu no one else can pull off anything the scale that Openreach are doing.
The politicians will be chasing for April 2015 at the latest. The customers will be chasing for ASAP, while the bean counters will be chasing for A(Late)AP.