BDUK, the government agency tasked with allocating funds to rural broadband projects recently (27th May) announced the successful bidders for the latest round of DCMS subsidies. Congratulations go to local authorities in Wiltshire, Norfolk and Devon & Somerset who, together with their delivery partners, will share £50m of funding towards new broadband pilots. All well and good but, in order to get a better understanding of this process, I’ve been looking closely at BDUK’s recently published 'Delivery Model', a document which sets out its philosophy and preferred approaches to issues such as network design, procurement and funding.
There are, predictably, some quite controversial points in this document but one I spotted early on was that BDUK’S objectives appear to have changed - again. For instance, in relation to broadband availability, the outgoing Labour government crafted BDUK’s original mission statement as follows:
“To drive forward the government’s proposed Universal Service Commitment (USC) of ensuring broadband availability (at 2Mbps) to every UK household by 2012 “
Following the election, the new coalition government initially proposed joint ownership of BDUK – under both BIS (the original parent) and DCMS. The former realised that the initial USC timetable was not feasible, and modified the objective thus:
“To ensure delivery of the 2Mbps Universal Service Commitment within the lifetime of this parliament (2015)”
By contrast, the DCMS version at the same time (June 2010) was notably less prescriptive, i.e.
“Effectively use the funds provided to meet the Universal Service Commitment”.
Now, in BDUK’s latest publication, and with DCMS fully in control, we see a further tweak to the broadband commitment, i.e.
“To ensure delivery of Standard Broadband to virtually all communities in the UK within the lifetime of this parliament (2015)”.
Government targets for ‘superfast’ broadband have likewise seen multiple iterations but that’s another story…
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