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The UK Government are proposing to significantly increase the value of the Single Supplier Framework agreement that they awarded to Openreach (BT) in 2024 under their £5bn Project Gigabit broadband roll-out scheme. The deal was originally valued at “up to” £800m, before later rising to £1.2bn and it may now jump by “up to £1.146bn” to total £2.346bn.
Just to recap. The framework, which has so far helped to award 8 Call-Off Contracts to Openreach, is focused on Cross-Regional (Type C) procurements (no other suppliers tackle Type C). Type C typically reflects remote rural areas where no or no appropriate market interest has previously been expressed before to the Government’s Building Digital UK (BDUK) team, or areas that have been de-scoped or terminated from a prior procurement (examples here, here, here and here).
Openreach have, over the past year or so, already absorbed several previously failed Project Gigabit contracts with different suppliers, and we’re expecting this to grow in the near future as a number of other contracts with different suppliers have since hit troubled times (e.g. several of the contracts previously held by CityFibre have been reduced and one was abandoned – here and here).