I remember looking at some of the details about NI in comparison with my county - North Yorkshire, which is the largest and one of the least populated counties in England.
I recall that there were some outcomes that highlighted big differences between NI and GB, which you partly alluded to:
- NI has a much greater percentage of properties dispersed in rural areas
- NI tends to have PCP cabinets that aren't that widely dispersed
- As a consequence, NI has a lot more properties on longer D-side lines than GB
- NI's first round of broadband subsidies resulted in lots of FTTC deployment, but was really targeting basic speeds.
- A widespread FTTC deployment therefore helped meet those aims.
- BDUK started later in GB than the first NI programme, but targetted superfast speeds ... and the deployment has done a fair job meeting targets.
- NI was relatively slow at getting a BDUK programme started that had superfast speed targets
- In GB, the main technique used (so far) to "top up" coverage targets has been to add PCPs for EO lines
- In NI, the main technique needed is to build more cabinets deeper into the network - all-in-one cabinets - or deploy FTTP instead.
Ironically, a very large percentage of NI lines qualify as "fibre" (according to TBB's "local" site, only 3.4% are not connected to fibre cabinets - which is lower than England at 5.8%, Wales at 8%, or Scotland at 11%). The real problem for NI is those long D-side lines ... so, while only 3.4% are not attached to fibre cabinets, nearly 17% of the lines that *are* connected to fibre cabinets cannot get superfast speeds (in England, the equivalent percentage is less than 3%).
The solution needed for NI is to send fibre deeper, adding deeper PCPs (as part of the all-in-one cabinets), so shortening the length of the D-side lines.
As this technique of sending fibre deeper into the network, and building all-in-one cabinets was pretty new, I suspect that not only did BDUK start late in NI, but it also progressed slowly. There must be a lot left to do...
I don't think the lack of LLU or 21CN provision really made much difference to the
superfast provision. It will have meant a lot of short lines would not have benefitted from speeds in the 8-16Mbps region.
That description is pretty generic to the whole of rural NI, but to deal specifically with your area (though FODC didn't exist at the time I last looked), you need to compare with smaller districts than the whole of a county like North Yorkshire. Places like Harrogate and Scarborough skew the results for the sparse rural areas.
I recall making the following statement a couple of years ago:
At the smaller end of the scales, Ryedale district is comparable with Fermanagh in population and density, while the combination of Richmondshire, Craven and Hambleton matches with Tyrone.
The most-populated district of NY, Harrogate, matches fairly well with Armagh.
Between these two groups, population size-wise, North Yorkshire has an extra 2 districts that, combined, would match a second Armagh.
Looking again, it seems that Ryedale and Richmondshire districts both have populations of around 52,000. Both include significant areas of either the North Yorkshire Moors or the Yorkshire Dales.
If you look on TBB's "local" site again, the equivalent figures (Ryedale/Richmondshire) are:
- Cannot reach 30Mbps = 25% / 26%
- Cannot reach 24Mbps = 24% / 24%
- Cannot reach 10Mbps = 20% / 18%
- Cannot reach 2Mbps = 10% / 10%
I can't claim that these areas are the worst in England - I'd probably need to check parts of Cumbria, Northumberland, or Devon (esp Exmoor) before saying that.
In fact, the worst parts of England are, almost certainly, East Yorkshire and the city of Hull. Hull, and the surrounding areas within East Yorkshire, are supplied by KC. Their policy of a mainly-FTTP focussed deployment means, in coverage terms, these two districts are right at the bottom of the tables. They'll be amongst the best ... eventually.
