Bentley Parish Council received this update regarding fibre Broadband in Bentley:

The Department for Digital Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) has an executive agency called Building Digital UK (BDUK) which is responsible for the delivery of gigabit broadband and universal 4G mobile phone coverage.

Hampshire-wide procurement:

Central government has provided BDUK with £5bn of funding to achieve this goal and BDUK has allocated £120mn for a procurement to deliver services to addresses in Hampshire that are not commercially viable.

Suppliers have been asked to provide details of their plans to rollout fibre broadband across the UK and BDUK has compiled these details into a single view so that they can identify addresses that are not going to be upgraded by commercial investments. The address list requiring a subsidy includes Bentley Parish.

BDUK had expected to issue a procurement in 2021 but this was delayed and the procurement documents were issued in September 2022 with the expectation that a contract can be awarded in April-June 2023. I should stress that this procurement is not being run by the County Council, it is being run by BDUK, an executive agency of DCMS.

 

Gigabit Voucher Scheme:

BDUK runs the gigabit voucher scheme in conjunction with the wider gigabit procurements. When a geographical area enters the BDUK gigabit procurement process applications for new projects are suspended, this allows bidding companies to compete for a fixed address list. After the procurement has been completed and a contract awarded (April – June 2023) the voucher scheme will be unfrozen and any address not covered by the winning bid will become eligible for the voucher scheme once more.