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back to article BT slurps from first govt broadband cash pot in Lancs deal

The first round of the government's public broadband funding has been awarded to Lancashire County Council, after the local authority agreed to a £62.5m project with national telco BT. It's early days in the bid for BDUK investment, but BT is the only one to have secured such a contract. Many other ISPs have pulled out of …

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  1. AndrueC Silver badge
    Meh

    There's either been some back handers (unlikely I feel) or else BT have shown they are the only game in town. Has anyone asked VM, TalkTalk, Sky why they didn't bid?

    As for Fujitsu - I'd like to say I was surprised but I'm not.

    Oh well, the main thing is that people get upgraded and given a decent service. BTw usually manage that for most people and perhaps the investment will even encourage LLU expansion.

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    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Probably something to do

      with BT winning the outsourcing contract in 2010 to provide Lancs Council with all ICT and related services until 2020.

      http://www.oneconnectlimited.co.uk/about-us.aspx

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      1. Anonymous Coward
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        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Probably something to do

        "ICT and related services"

        The "related services" include most of what you'd be expecting the council to do - social workers are now One Connect Ltd employees you know!

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    3. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      TT, Sky don't do infrastructure - that's Openreach's job hence BT winning.

      VM probably can't afford to dig up all the pavements etc + its a closed network.

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      1. AndrueC Silver badge
        Reply Icon
        Meh

        Sky own Easynet. They are one of the bigger providers of networking infrastructure in the UK and have quite a large presence overseas. TalkTalk have also been building their own network. I don't think it unreasonable to wonder why they are not trying to join in.

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  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Nah, the tender document was probably carefully drafted to ensure only BT ticked all the boxes.

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  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Huh?

    Can someone tell me why Openreach is not supplying these things?

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    1. Tom 7
      Reply Icon

      Re: Huh?

      They seem to have enough trouble fixing the current stock.

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    2. Don Constance
      Reply Icon
      Happy

      Re: Huh?

      As far as the physical stuff, fibre, DSLAM cabinets etc. goes it is, for "BT" read "Openreach".

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  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    BaE Systems anyone?

    It couldn't possibly have anything to do with BaE Systems being just moments up the road from the LCC offices now, could it?

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  5. Andre Carneiro
    Thumb Down

    FTTC? Booh!

    It annoys me how seemingly short-sighted the deployment of FTTC is... Does this mean we'll be going through this whole bollocks again in 10 or 15 years time, when 80Mb is no longer enough?

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  6. al 3

    Remember Network Rail...

    The government should bring Openreach back into public ownership (they should never have privatised that bit) and leave BT wholesale and retail to do the competitive bit on even ground with other suppliers

    BT Openreach won't share ducting and infrastructure (depsite ofcom's worst, sorry, best, efforts), it's been like that since privatisation in the 80's , this is what really stifled competition and left BT with the monopoly they always had !

    Look at the numbers for LLU ....

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    1. Steven Jones
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      Re: Remember Network Rail...

      "The government should bring Openreach back into public ownership (they should never have privatised that bit) "

      So that's another few billion pounds to be added to the national debt then - well, assuming you

      Of course at the time of privatisation there was not separate "local loop" organisation and, in any case, the government raised as much in cash terms via the three tranches of share sales as BT's entire market capitalisation, so you might think the government did fairly well out of that deal when the accumulated inflation is taken into account.

      It's also worth noting that, at the time of privatisation, competition was to be provided by the local cable franchises (who had cable TV delivery monopolies) and, to a considerable extent, that arrived with about 50% of households covered.

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  7. feanor
    Facepalm

    What an absolute joke our government and communications regulators are, what an absolute waste of space. BT the incumbent monopoly provider knows all it has to do is sit tight and refuse to invest anything and the government will simply cough-up, because what choice does it have?

    Talk about holding the country to ransom. BT should have had its monopoly broken up years ago, but no, there its sits investing where it can guarantee a profit, and where its not worth it, wait for the government to stump up and make a profit anyway.

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