Digital Region | |
---|---|
Commercial? | Yes |
Type of project | Next-generation high-speed broadband network |
Products | 'Superfast Broadband'[1] |
Location | South Yorkshire region, England, UK |
Owner | originally: Yorkshire Forward subsequently: Department for Business, Innovation & Skills |
Established | April 2009[2] |
Disestablished | 15 August 2014 |
Funding | Grants, loans[2] |
Status | defunct |
Website | www |
Digital Region, also stylised digital region, was a project in South Yorkshire set up to establish a high-speed next-generation 'Superfast Broadband' network in the specific region of northern England, first seeded in 2006 ,[3] with 97% population coverage expected by the end of 2012.[2] It was the first of its kind in the United Kingdom (UK). The project was co-ordinated by Digital Region Limited (DRL), owned by the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS) (having taken over the role from the now defunct Yorkshire Forward), and the four local authorities that encompass South Yorkshire; these being Sheffield City Council,[2] Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council, Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Council, and Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council.[1] Thales Transport and Security was chosen to design, build and operate the project on behalf of Digital Region Limited (who will manage the project),[2] registered in England no: 5586340, registered office: Electric Works, Sheffield Digital Campus, Sheffield, S1 2BJ.
On 15 August 2013, it was announced that the project would close, due to the ongoing financial issues it has been facing.[4][5]
The hope of the project was that it would eventually become self-financing, however loans and grants of over £90 million[1] were used to enable the project to start. The project received:
Due to low take-up,[3] the project suffered a very significant operating loss; not even taking into account the substantial interest payments due on loans for capital construction.
The project area covered the city, towns and villages of Sheffield,[2] Barnsley, Doncaster, and Rotherham. It was expected to serve around 1.3 million people, 546,000 homes, and 40,000 businesses.[6]
Whilst the build of the project was substantially completed, it had a low take-up. None of the six major consumer ISPs were signed up to resell services on the network, and after a number of significant startups on the Digital Region network enjoyed success with Superfast Fibre in South Yorkshire, the incumbent telephone operator British Telecom (BT), deployed its own fibre-based broadband services, attracting many more users due to an existing user base upgrading, and the wide variety of ISPs available (PlusNet, Sky, TalkTalk, and BT).[7]
The Digital Region network closed finally on 15 August 2014,[8] with many of its resellers closing at that point. Origin Broadband acquired many of the customers who were on the Digital Region network,[9] and succeeded the defunct network with their own bespoke ADSL2+ network,[10] while other ISPs went on to be resellers for other network operators.