Tenders and sharing the spoils

Herefordshire and Gloucestershire county councils have teamed up to issue a tender for rural broadband. The tender notice, issued on Hereford County Council’s website, follows the receipt of government funding for Herefordshire to be one of the four rural broadband project pilot areas. Announced in October 2010, the other pilot areas are areas of Cumbria, North Yorkshire and the Scottish Highlands and each area will receive between £5 and £10 million funding to put towards the scheme. The joint operation between Herefordshire and Gloucestershire County Councils is expected to increase the amount of funding for this particular project by decreasing costs, which could cost up to £50 million.
The rural broadband pilot scheme is expected to be fully rolled out by 2015 and is targeted at those challenging, very rural areas that are not viable commercially. Initially the tender scope requires a minimum of 2Mbps speeds in these areas. By 2018, this will be increased to 30Mbps. Once the infrastructure which forms these tender opportunities is in place, ISP’s will then use the new infrastructure to offer competitively priced services to rural locations.

Up to seven contractors are expected to win a stake in the investment opportunity and expression of interest in the tender must be received by midday on 7th July 2011. The vast majority, if not 100%, of premises across the identified areas are expected to be able to receive the Next Generation Access (NGA) broadband service within three years of the start of the contract. The procurement process itself is expected to last several months and involve substantial dialogue between the Councils and potential bidders. Potential tender winners may also be expected to contribute to the costs of implementing the project at their own commercial risk making this a true collaboration between government vision, private investment and public needs.

IT tenders appear to be on the increase during this recession, notably those involving broadband infrastructure. Just last week, Surrey County Council announced it was aiming to connect all homes and business in Surrey to high-speed broadband lines by 2013. Up to 20% of premises in the Surrey area are expected to be missed by BT’s Fibre Optic line project – leaving it to the Local Authority to fill in the gaps where the commercial viability is low for established providers. Surrey’s current tender opportunity is designed to bring those missed areas into high-speed realms in order to establish 100% high speed access by 2013.