Standing on the steps of Downing Street, moments after entering office, Boris Johnson reiterated his commitment for 100% coverage of ‘full fibre’ broadband in the next five years. That’s fibre to approximately 32m homes by 2025.
Where do things stand today? Currently 8% (~2.5m) of homes can access full fibre broadband. Openreach has a 4m homes target (by 2021) with a longer term ambition for 15m (by mid 2020s) assuming the right regulatory environment. That has previously been described as a ‘significant push’. Virgin Media, TalkTalk and more recently O2 have all announced plans to invest in their own full fibre networks as well as those from pure fibre operators like Gigaclear, Hyperoptic and CityFibre. So fibre rollout is progressing. Boris however is asking to double that effort within the next 6 years. The industry say they are up for it, but have stressed certain things are needed from Ofcom and government for it to become a reality.
What are the industry asking for? Essentially four things. One, a rethink of the business rates applied to fibre. Two, planning reform to improve access to land and buildings to lay fibre. Three, that all new build properties are developed with the provision of fibre in mind. Four, investment in the engineering skills and talent needed to do the job. Of course, it is also highly dependent on a regulatory framework that allows for a fair, risk adjusted return – something Ofcom will be considering for the period 2021–26. Not mentioned, but also likely to be needed will be an increase in public subsidy for those particularly hard to reach places. At present only £3–5bn is on the table.
How realistic is all this? Assuming Boris is serious about his commitment, a rollout of this magnitude would be on a scale unlike anywhere else we’ve seen. Estimates suggest it would require an additional £30bn of investment and as many as 30,000 engineers to make it happen. Of course, it could also be realised by fudging something i.e. using other technologies (G Fast) or 4G/5G – not altogether silly ideas.
