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The UK Government (DSIT) appears set to slightly expand their Project Gigabit contract with altnet ISP Connect Fibre (Fibre Assets) for the £33m (public subsidy) Derbyshire (LOT 3) Project Gigabit contract; this originally (here) aimed to build a full fibre (FTTP) broadband network to cover “around” 17,000 premises in hard-to-reach areas.
However, it’s important to remember that such contracts are not static and their scope, as well as committed levels of public funding, can change over time for a number of different reasons – informed by regular reviews of existing UK deployment plans. For example, commercial operators may expand or reduce their roll-out plans in the same region(s), which can reduce or grow the scope for public investment within those same contracted areas.
The contracted operator could also find the deployment to be more expensive, or possibly even cheaper, than previously envisaged. Such adjustments may occur due to changes in build costs and interest rates / inflation, as well as any unexpected obstacles to street works or greater efficiencies of build than planned or expected. Suffice to say, there can be various reasons why the contracted scope of related builds and the level of allocated public funding may change over time.
In this case Connect Fibre’s deployment contract for Derbyshire (LOT 3) has just been modified to increase its public subsidy by £1,577,558 (total funding of c.£35m) and reach an additional 790 premises. The contract’s new “total scope” is 18,651 premises.
The additional scope is to be welcomed, albeit with the catch that there may be further changes in the future, which could go in a different direction. So, it’s not always easy to tell what the final picture will be until you actually reach the end.
According to the latest May 2026 data from the government’s umbrella Building Digital UK (BDUK) agency (here), Connect Fibre has so far only managed to complete the build for 1,200 premises in Derbyshire, which is fairly slow-going given that the contract was first awarded all the way back at the end of 2023.