Broadband infrastructure in Scotland: public review

9. Submission Requirements

Responses to this PR RFI must include the following:

1. A data submission that should cover your current and planned premises coverage (i.e. premises served by your network, or planned to be served by your network) at UPRN level as per the format outlined in Annex A:

• Please include all current and planned premises coverage, including premises that are outside of the geographic areas, and/or outside of the premises base provided in the template files.
• Please include any existing or planned infrastructure you have gained with assistance from public subsidy for example Vouchers, Superfast (including DSSB), R100, Gigahubs or GIS etc.
• Additional guidance can be provided to suppliers if required, please contact gigabitomr@gov.scot for support.

2. An up to date Supporting Evidence Pack.

3. We would also like to hear from operators their views as to the types of wholesale access products they would like to see offered on any newly created subsidised network infrastructure. This information may inform the intervention design. Please note that we are not obliged to include these products in the ITT.

Please note that where your coverage claims are for gigabit-capable networks, then your response detailing your proposed network design and architecture must consider the technical definition as outlined in Annex C.

Evidence to demonstrate how planned investments are credible

There are three essential areas against which we will evaluate to ensure overall credibility of your planned investment. Our assessment will be based on the suite of evidence you provide in the Annex B: Supporting Evidence Pack and will include:

technology - whether the technology you have deployed and intend to deploy is gigabit-capable and meets the technical criteria as outlined in Annex C: Technical definition;

deliverability - whether your deployment plans are in line with the phases/premises passed outlined in your business plan, with the key build stages and processes outlined;

commercial/financial viability - whether you have credible commercial plans such as sufficient access to capital and whether the drawdown of your funds aligns with your deployment plan and build programme.

The information you provide should be consistent across these elements to support a joined-up evaluation of your responses.

In assessing whether planned investments are credible, we may:

• review the business plans and calendar deployment plans to ensure these are consistent and in sufficient detail for each phase of the planned build;
• require evidence to demonstrate credible and plausible character of the planned investment which as a minimum should include a business plan, a detailed calendar deployment plan, evidence of adequate financing, consideration of risk and proposed technical architecture;
• ensure calendar deployment plans include the key build stages and when suppliers expect to undertake significant activities within their build programme such as design, surveying, acquisition, network build, network installation etc or the key processes involved in your build plan approach for design phase, survey phase, road notices/ wayleaves etc.;
• test that funding availability is sufficient for each phase of the planned build and that the capital allocated for the specific OMR area is sufficient and is consistent with the deployment plan;
• review the terms of any financing arrangements and any dependencies and assumptions associated with the financing including repayment terms, KPIs, expected ROI, dependency on public subsidy such as vouchers or other subsidy schemes;
• ensure that the network design and dimensioning information provided is in line with the projections made in the Business Plan regarding customer connections and growth expectations.

Further information is included in Annex B and the Supporting Evidence Pack.

If your future network plans are entirely reliant on public subsidy/interventions (e.g. Vouchers) it may not be necessary to provide a complete set of supporting evidence alongside your data submission. As set out within the Subsidy Control classification guidance^[8], planned voucher build will be classified as ‘White’ unless a voucher has been ‘issued’ or ‘claimed’ in which case it will be classified as ‘Under Review’ and ‘Grey’ respectively. Classification of voucher build will be based on Building Digital UK^[9] (BDUK) supplied data of GBVS voucher status and Scottish Government held data for SBVS.

In all cases please do provide us with a full data submission.