006004 - Local Full fibre Network

Newcastle City Council, on behalf of North of Tyne Combined Authority (NTCA), are hosting a Market Engagement Day to enhance the NTCA's ambition to move to fibre infrastructure across a range of public sites throughout the region. The NTCA is currently in dialogue with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport's Local Full Fibre Network Programme.

The NTCA is a combined authority that covers the local authority areas of Newcastle, North Tyneside and Northumberland, in the North East of England. The area covers both urban and rural geographies, totalling 5,209km2 with a total population of 815,787 in 373,570 residential dwellings.

The NTCA also contains 23,610 businesses. NTCA is a diverse area, extending from its major city through a network of suburban, market and coastal towns to high-quality countryside and rural towns.

NTCA is a highly coherent functional economic geography with strong internal commuting flows, a primary functional housing market and strong business linkages in key growth sectors. At present our proposed project would be predominantly based on the procurement of dark fibre/gigabit capable infrastructure connecting public sector sites across Newcastle, North Tyneside and Northumberland.

This could be made up of a single large dark fibre network, however we anticipate that the significant geographic area we are seeking to cover may result in the procurement of more than one network from one or more suppliers. It is conceivable that this could be delivered by one supplier who specialises in urban areas and a second supplier who specialises in rural areas for example.

Where it is not viable to deploy dark fibre infrastructure, we would seek to procure full fibre connectivity to key strategic sites via a separate procurement. It is expected that by adopting complimentary approaches this would extend the availability of full fibre infrastructure to sites that are currently unable to access cost effective gigabit capable connectivity. We are currently in dialogue phase with DCMS for this process, which requires the funding to be spent by March 2021.