The Welsh Government has undertaken a procurement to establish a framework (the “Framework”) to deliver the Extending High Speed Broadband project (the "Project").
Once the Framework is established, the Authority intends to award a series of call-off contracts (following individual competitive selection processes), that will provide grant funding to telecoms suppliers to cover the "gap" in costs that are required to deliver superfast connections to communities / premises in Wales that would not otherwise be served by commercial operators under normal market conditions, due to the high infrastructure cost of building connections to those "hard to reach" communities / premises.
Grants made under the call-off contracts are out of scope for the purposes of VAT.
Coverage
The Authority’s 2022 open market review identified that around 84,000 premises within Wales did not have access to superfast download speeds (at least 30Mbps) exacerbating the digital divide. Ofcom has previously stated that a subset of these (around 10,000 premises) do not yet have access to at least 10Mbps.
Despite the efforts of the telecommunications industry and public sector interventions, there are still premises in Wales that do not have access to at least superfast broadband speeds. The Authority has therefore developed the EHSB project to address this gap and provide fast and reliable broadband to those premises.
Whilst the Authority is confident that the number of premises without superfast download speeds has drastically reduced since the 2022 open market review (as the scope of commercial and other public sector deployments, including Project Gigabit, have become clearer), the Authority anticipates that the number of premises that are currently in scope of the Framework is in the region of 29,000 premises.
The current, indicative list of eligible premises that are anticipated to be in scope for the Framework will be subject to refinement/update during the duration of the Framework (for example, to reflect any premises which may be addressed by other interventions). The premises that are in-scope for each call-off contract will be confirmed in the relevant request for proposals issued under the Framework.
Additional Information
The Framework will have two lots. The first lot (Lot 1) will be for projects that require the installation of broadband network infrastructure to 1,000 premises and over. The second lot (Lot 2) will be for projects that require the installation of broadband network infrastructure to under 1,000 premises.
Suppliers were permitted to apply for either or both lots.
The estimated total value set out in this notice is in respect of all call-off contracts that may be awarded under the Framework. It is an estimate only and is in no way guaranteed or final. The associated tender documents for this opportunity contain more specific information.
The dates and total duration for any call-off contracts referred to in this notice or the associated procurement documents are also estimates and for illustrative purposes only.