Superfast, ultrafast and gigabit capable broadband infrastructure - Open Market Review: request for information - January 2025

Annex B: Data submission format

Introduction

The Scottish Government requires certain fields of data for each pertinent Scottish address as identified by the UPRN in order to monitor the current and future delivery of superfast and gigabit-capable services. This is done by requesting data on current and future connections from relevant suppliers. The below describes the format of the request file and how to format the data to return to us. If you require any additional support, guidance or clarification with this, please get in touch with us at: gigabitomr@gov.scot

UPRN list files

The Scottish Government can provide a list of UPRNs if required. Please direct any requests to: gigabitomr@gov.scot

The UPRNs used for this OMR have been sourced from Ordnance Survey AddressBase Premium Epoch 115, published December 2024 using the following high-level logic:

• addressbase_postal = 'N' are marked as ineligible i.e. not a postal address
• CountryCode is ‘S’ i.e. within Scotland
• LogicalStatusCode found in the Local Property Identifier is restricted to either to ‘1’ (approved) or ‘6’ (provisional)
• LogicalStatusCode found in the BLPU table is restricted to ‘1', but if the BLPU State Code is NULL a LogicalStatusCode of '6' is also accepted.
• Sort by entry date (descending) and remove UPRN duplicates (more recent records are given a priority over older records when multiple Local Property Identifier records are given for one UPRN).
• A number of specific classifications are also excluded, those which the Scottish Government deem not eligible for a broadband connection. A list of classifications can be made available on request.

Further details can be obtained via the AddressBase Premium Technical Specification.^[10]

Please do not pre-filter your data based on the UPRN files, instead please provide us with your entire UPRN dataset.

If you are using the UPRN files as the starting point for your return, please remove any UPRN rows which are not part of your current or planned network.

Please note that final UPRN datasets generated during IA design and issued as part of the invitation to tender (ITT) for procurements are further filtered, and deprioritised where necessary subject to factors such as UPRN proximity, type and location.

Explanation of Required Fields

The information that we provide against each property/premises is as follows:

The information that we ask for against each property/premises is as follows (please note the definitions provided after the table below):

Response Definitions

Ready for Service (RFS): RFS means a service can be ordered by a Communications Provider (CP) or end user for the premises and provisioned within industry standard timescales with no excess construction charges being applied to the CP or end user directly or indirectly (i.e. any end user would expect to pay only a published pre-agreed connection charge, if one was to be imposed, too), unless and to the extent that such excess construction charges are incurred due to a reason directly attributable to the private land of the end user, or of any landlord of the end user.

Future Rollout: All UPRNs must have a date of future rollout based on the expected RFS date for each premise. These dates must correlate with information provided in your Deployment Plan as part of your supporting evidence.

Delivery Phase: These phases should align to your Calendar Deployment Plan and should correlate and be consistent with the information contained in your Supporting Evidence Pack. Include context regarding each delivery phase in your Supporting Evidence Pack such as the risks and dependencies for the successful delivery of each phase and the mitigations/arrangements that you have in place to address these risks; a description regarding your resourcing plan for each phase; key milestones within each phase and the subsequent activities/timeframes to achieve RFS.

Design Phases: ‘1. Awaiting HLD’ - High Level Design (HLD) has not yet been completed. ‘2. HLD complete’ - HLD/area level plan has been completed. However, Low Level Design (LLD) work has not yet been completed or is in progress. ‘3. LLD complete’ - LLD and survey work has been completed, however, subcontractors/build partners, or in-house resources to complete the network build, are still to be appointed. ‘4. Build team appointed’ - Subcontractors / build partners or if applicable in-house civil resource has been appointed and commissioned to start the network build in accordance with the LLDs. All the necessary planning, acquisitions and wayleave agreements are finalised to allow the network to be constructed. ‘5. In build’ - Network build is in progress, however premises are not yet able to take up a service. ‘6. RFS’ - Network build and end-to-end testing is complete and premises are RFS

Funding Stage: The status of funding allocated to the UPRN. If your funding allocation is linked to your Delivery_Phase please reflect that in your data and explain in your Supporting Evidence Pack. The Scottish Government’s assessment of supplier returns will be based, in full, on the evidence requested in Annex C. As such, we cannot guarantee that we will accept how suppliers have categorised the status of their funding position.

Funding Stage Options: ‘1. No funding planned or committed’ - While you may be planning to deliver to this UPRN, the funding is not yet in place to do so and/or you are seeking funding. ‘2. Funding planned, but not committed’ - You have in principle funding agreed to deliver to this UPRN, but the funding is not immediately available, requires further decisions such as Board approval, or is dependent on (for example) performance metrics. ‘3. Funding committed’ - Funding has been identified and has been allocated to delivery of this UPRN. There are no further conditions around drawing down or using funding and the funding is ring-fenced solely for the delivery of associated premises. This should be explained clearly in your financial plan, which should be provided as part of your Supporting Evidence Pack.

Public Intervention: Define if coverage has been or is planned to be connected using a public intervention. ‘Yes’ will be marked when a premises is dependent on funding from vouchers, GigaHubs, Superfast, LFFN, RGC, R100, SBVS or GIS Programmes, or when an existing service was built with funding from one of those Programmes. Any other public interventions (such as Local Authority schemes) should also be acknowledged and marked as a ‘Yes’ here. Further explanation should be referenced within your Supporting Evidence Pack. An entry of ‘No’ would indicate that the premises is planned to be built, or has already been built, entirely through commercial funding with no dependency on public intervention. Evidence of this funding should be provided in your Supporting Evidence Pack. Where you have indicated that a UPRN is dependent on public intervention by providing a ‘Yes’ in the ‘Public_Intervention’ column within your data coverage response; the approach by the Scottish Government is to provide a default Gigabit White determination to any planned build and to supersede this determination with project-specific intervention data as described in the OMR/PR - Subsidy Control Classification Guidance. Any current build would not usually undergo this same approach.

Public Intervention Type: GIS (pre contract award)’ - Gigabit Infrastructure Subsidy, pre contract award GIS (post contract award)’ - Gigabit Infrastructure Subsidy, post contract award for contracted and ‘Incidental Coverage’ premises, relevant only where you have secured a GIS contract. For a definition of Incidental Coverage premises, please refer to the instructions for completing the Financial Model in the ITT or contract. ‘Superfast’ – Coverage from the 2012 or 2016 National Broadband Scheme, including the Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband Programme (DSSB) ‘R100’ – Coverage planned or delivered via the R100 contracts ‘SBVS (post approval)’ – voucher approved, not yet delivered ‘SBVS (build complete)’ – voucher receipted, service delivered ‘GBVS (pre request)’ - GBVS, before a Voucher has been requested ‘GBVS (post request)’ - GBVS, after a Voucher has been requested / issued ‘LFFN’ - Local Full Fibre Network ‘GigaHubs’ – GigaHubs Project ‘RGC’ - Rural Gigabit Connectivity Additional public intervention types can also be provided, such as Local Authority funded schemes.

Extra columns

Aside from the standard columns above, you may wish to add additional columns to provide additional information about your network. If this is the case, please add additional column(s) at the end of your data return and provide a clear explanation in your Supporting Evidence Pack of what these columns indicate.

Logic Table

The logic table should be used as a reference when populating your data coverage submission. It demonstrates the typical data presentation that you should provide to the Scottish Government and is consistent with the common data checks carried out.

Cells that have been ‘greyed out’ should not be populated for the example scenarios provided.

The logic table can be downloaded from the ‘supporting documents’ section of this publication.

Frequently Asked Questions

To help with your submission the following FAQs have been provided for your reference.

1. I have a network build which requires additional work and costs to provide a gigabit service to the end user for which I would like to obtain Voucher funding for. How should this be represented in my data submission?

1.1. If you do require public intervention funding to complete the connection to the end user and cannot support this work commercially, then show coverage in the Future_Technology field, Design_Stage = ‘5. In build’, Delivery_Phase = ‘Final Drop Connection Required’ and Public_Intervention = ‘Yes’. Please see scenario 7 within the logic table above for a data presentation example.

1.2. If you do not require public intervention funding to complete the connection to the end user and can support this work commercially, then show coverage in the Current_Technology field, Design_Stage = ‘6. RFS’, Delivery_Phase = ‘Final Drop Connection Required’ and Public_Intervention = ‘No’. Please see scenario 8 within the logic table above for a data presentation example.

2. I am planning on delivering to an area and would like to claim some Vouchers there. How should I reflect this in my OMR return, particularly if I am unsure on the specific UPRNs that I intend to claim Vouchers for?

2.1. If you can indicate in your OMR return which specific UPRNs are commercially funded and which are wholly/partially dependent on Vouchers, then please use the Public_Intervention column to show this.

2.2. If you are unable to identify the specific UPRNs at the time of your OMR return, you have two options:

2.2.1. Mark all UPRNs as ‘No’ for Public_Intervention i.e. all UPRNs are to be delivered using commercial funding. This may result in these UPRNs being classified as Under Review, Grey or Black subject to the presence of other suppliers and therefore being ineligible for Voucher funding.

2.2.2. Mark all UPRNs as ‘Yes’ for Public_Intervention i.e. all UPRNs are dependent on at least some public subsidy and without this subsidy you would not deliver there commercially. This is likely to result in these UPRNs being marked as White for your submission and therefore they could be eligible for Voucher funding subject to the presence of other suppliers.

3. Why should I respond to the OMR if I’m fully reliant on public subsidy funding? (i.e. Public_Intervention = Yes for all UPRNs)

3.1. If your future network plans are entirely reliant on public subsidy/interventions (e.g. vouchers) it may not be necessary for you to provide a complete set of supporting evidence alongside your data submission.

3.2. Technical Evidence is still required, however, the requirements relating to Financial/Commercial details may not be required on your Supporting Evidence Pack. If you are providing a first-time submission, we will advise if further information is required.

3.3. By providing a submission, this also ensures that we can represent your data correctly to encourage voucher eligibility accuracy; and also allows us to complete a comparison exercise with public subsidy data that we currently hold to ensure alignment with yourselves.

4. Why can’t the Scottish Government use my Ofcom’s Connected Nations data submission?

4.1. The Open Market Review (OMR) and Public Review (PR) - Subsidy Control Classification Guidance^[11] provides strict guidance for the assessment of supplier submissions to create a legal baseline for intervention.

4.2. The Ofcom Connected Nations data is not collected for this purpose and is therefore not subject to the same assessment criteria.

5. How often should I update my OMR data / Supporting Evidence Pack?

5.1. Keep us updated - in a dynamic market, it’s difficult for us to assess information as valid if it’s more than six months old for example.

5.2. Where your evidence no longer aligns with your data coverage submission and / or your evidence has timed out, evaluators will request additional information from you.

5.3. For example, evidence and/or data that has not been updated for a long time by supplier X, who last provided evidence in December 2021. This would now likely be out of date and we would assume you would like to update this to reflect the current position in your Supporting Evidence Pack.

5.4. Suppliers are expected to sign off their Submission Information tab for every release of their Supporting Evidence Pack even if just to confirm that there is no change from the previous submission.

6. I have an existing contract e.g. R100 or Project Gigabit in Scotland GIS contract, how should I represent planned incidental build within my submission?

6.1 Please see scenario 4 within the logic table which shows that this coverage should be represented with Public_Intervention = ‘Yes’ and Public_Intervention_Type = ‘GIS (post contract award)’

6.2 If this GIS contract were to fall away for whatever reason, or this aspect of the coverage were to fall away within the contract, then these UPRNs should be updated in your next OMR and either removed from the planned coverage, or represented as commercial plans (i.e. Public_Intervention = ‘No’)

6.3 As this build progresses to RFS then please ensure your OMR return is updated to reflect scenario 2 in the logic table

7. Why can’t the Scottish Government use the UK Government’s national OMR data?

7.1 The Scottish Government captures data for additional purposes to UK Government, in particular superfast coverage to allow for monitoring against the R100 programme and SBVS eligibility.

7.2 In terms of GIS contracts, the Scottish Government is the procuring authority for Type A and Type B contracts and therefore has responsibility for the Subsidy Control compliance of those contracts.