By Nick Turner

Last updated at 11:52, Monday, 10 September 2012

County councillors will meet this week to decide whether to award a £40m contract to roll-out superfast broadband across Cumbria to BT.

Tim Farron: ‘The money is making a real difference’

The telecommunications giant is the only bidder left in a process that began in October 2010 when Cumbria was chosen for a Governmentsubsidy to bring broadband to rural areas.

In June councillors rejected bids from both BT and Fujitsu, saying that neither company matched their ambition to deliver broadband speeds of 25Mbps by 2015 to 90 per cent of Cumbrian homes and businesses. Fujitsu withdrew from the process and this week it emerged that BT was heavily criticised in a report prepared for councillors ahead of their June meeting.

Confidential papers seen by Cumbrian Newspapers’ business website www.in-cumbria.com state: “While BT submitted a complete tender, it was heavily tailored with a range of conditions, caveats, assumptions and dependencies which would have placed undue financial risk on the authority.

“The cumulative affect of such conditions render the BT submission non-compliant.”

On Thursday, the issue will be discussed in private by councillors who will decide if BT has made enough improvements to its bid to allow them to award the contract.

Critics claim the county council’s project is flawed since it is aiming to use one big contract to solve all of Cumbria’s broadband issues. Among them is South Lakes MP Tim Farron, who said: “The bidding is down to one business – BT. Experts have been telling me BT was planning to use some of the money it will receive to do things that it would do anyway.

“I’ve passed these concerns on to the county council. Sadly, they haven’t listened.

“In the last 12 months the whole of Norway has been connected to 100Mbps and we are still messing about thinking about who to award the contract to. I have repeatedly called on the council to use the money more intelligently, and get away from thinking they have to have a big contract and deal with just one company.”

BT’s managing director of Next Generation Access Bill Murphy said: “Obviously we didn’t work hard enough [on the tender], but we are not walking away.”

PMcClounie@cngroup.co.uk

First published at 11:30, Monday, 10 September 2012
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk