Agenda item

-        Strategic Director of Finance to report.

Councillor Akhtar, Deputy Leader, introduced a report by the Strategic Director of Finance, which gave an update on the South Yorkshire Digital Region project.

Digital Region was a high speed broadband network for South Yorkshire which would benefit the region’s citizens, businesses and public sector organisations.  The project was delivered by Digital Region Ltd. (DRL) which was created using funding from the ERDF by the 4 South Yorkshire Local Authorities.

The Digital Region project would see a total of 690 km of new duct put in place across the region allowing 97% of South Yorkshire to benefit from next generation, superfast broadband and its multitude of benefits to both businesses and households alike.

A total of 502 km of new fibre optic cable had been installed across South Yorkshire which equated to 92% of the 545 km to be installed in phase 1 of the network rollout.  31 telephone exchanges had now been completed out of the initial 36 planned for phase 1 and 54 for the complete network.  This would mean that 180,000 premises now had the potential to be connected to the DRL network.  By January, 2012, 82% of the households in South Yorkshire would have the option to connect to the DRL network.

99.4 km of new fibre optic cabling had been laid in Rotherham out of a total of 102.1 km for the entire Rotherham area.  This meant that the Rotherham network was 97% complete.  All 6 telephone exchanges for the Rotherham area had been upgraded and all 6 had been commissioned.

DRL had been awarded the contract for the Council’s data and voice network (Minute No. 195 of 9^th March, 2011).  Civic Building would be live on the DRL network by the end of July, 2011.  Riverside House would have 2 links into the Digital Region network for resilience, both along Main Street, 1 link going to the Rotherham North telephone exchange and 1 to the Rotherham Central exchange.  Riverside’s first DRL circuit would go live in September, 2011, with the second circuit going live shortly thereafter.

The DRL network would then be used to facilitate the transfer of servers and data from the old Civic data centre to the new data centre in Riverside House.  The majority of the Council’s buildings and schools would be migrated over to the new DRL network by April, 2012.

The Capital Programme included provision for a £2 million repayable loan to DRL to support the project.  The cost of creating the Council’s data network had been budgeted for in the 2011-2015 ICT Capital budget.  The annual running cost of the network would be met from existing network budgets and was a reduction of £150,000 per annum when compared to the current cost of providing the network.

Cabinet Members welcomed the good progress being made, but also noted the risk and uncertainties associated with this project.

Resolved:-  (1)  That the report be noted.

(2)  That the Digital Region contract revisions and the progress of the Digital Region project be noted.