Cumbria Rejects BT, Fujitsu Broadband Bids

Cumbria County Council has rejected bids from BT and Fujitsu to rollout superfast broadband within the county.

The bids to deploy broadband in the remote county were rejected on the grounds that they did not adequately meet the tender requirements of the Council’s contract.

Cumbrian Reasons

Speaking to TechWeekEurope, a spokeperson for the Cumbria County Council explained that it could not provide the exact reasons as to why the bids from BT and Fujitsu were rejected, because of legal procurement reasons and the commercial sensitivity of the information.

It has been reported elsewhere that both bids failed because BT and Fujitsu failed to satisfy the demands of the council to connect 90 percent of Cumbrian homes and businesses with broadband speeds of 25Mbps by 2015.

However, according to the council, the reasons were a bit more complex than that, saying there were various factors for the rejection and it wasn’t the same issue that harmed both bids.

The council spokesman told TechWeekEurope that the Connecting Cumbria contract should be worth in excess of £40m. The Council has already secured £17.1m from the government’s BDUK fund. It has also gained £6.3m, thanks to a performance award grant because it exceeded its targets. Both the district and county council opted to plow this £6.3m back into broadband provision.

It is also hoping to secure another £20m of European funding.

Rejected bids

“Cabinet received detailed submissions from the final two potential suppliers (Fujitsu and BT) and despite a lot of progress being made neither of the final tenders had completely fulfilled the original and full requirements of the procurement process,” the council said.

“Both suppliers will now be invited to take part in new negotiations, which will lead to revised final tenders being submitted later this year,” it said, with a final decision to be made in September.

“Today was an extremely difficult decision for cabinet but we are confident it is the right thing to do,” added Cllr Elizabeth Mallinson, who is a Cumbrian cabinet member and acts as a lead for the Connecting Cumbria project. “Although we have not identified a preferred supplier at this stage we have made significant progress in terms of our overall broadband strategy for Cumbria, both in this procurement process and in attracting public and private funding to help deliver Superfast Broadband across rural and urban Cumbria.

“This programme has presented us with the opportunity to have a voice at a national level helping to expose issues for rural counties which require action at government level. Challenges that go beyond the boundaries of our county including those relating to market failure, a heavily regulated market and the navigation of European ‘State Aid’ regulations.

“The Connecting Cumbria programme is a very complex initiative and one that we need to get right if we are to meet the needs and expectations of Cumbria’s communities and businesses.”

BT and Fujitsu respond

Meanwhile BT informed TechWeekEurope that the rejection is part and parcel of a highly competitive bidding process for the region. “We will continue to work with the authority to try and secure what is a highly contested tender,” said a BT spokesman.

Fujitisu said it was surprised by the decision. “This is an unexpected outcome and we are currently reviewing our options,” a spokesperson said. “We remain focused on this and other next-generation broadband projects.”

Cumbrian challenge

Cumbria is perhaps one of the most challenging rural environments for a superfast broadband network deployment.

This is evidenced by the decision last month by Cable & Wireless Worldwide (C&WW) to cut the broadband service to a remote community in the county, because it was “uneconomical” after the public subsidy ended.

This has led to individuals taking matters into their own hands. In March, community broadband co-operative Cybermoor said it was looking for investors to expand the fibre broadband provision in Alston Moor in Cumbria. The first phase of the new network was completed after residents began digging their own trenches in November 2009.

More recently volunteers turned up with their spades in a field Quernmore, in North Lancashire, to begin digging trenches that will allow them to bring a 1Gbps fibre connection to their homes and villages as part of the B4RN (Broadband for the Rural North) project.

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