Oxfordshire taps into fiber to boost public services delivery

Oxfordshire County is one of the councils that secured funds under the GigaHubs project, through which the UK government seeks to help local councils ensure gigabit capable connectivity at public sector buildings. Apart from using the funds to lower broadband costs, the council also came up with the idea to connect community centers to fiber, allowing them to deliver more public services, including healthcare.

In the first phase, completed in 2023, the council established fiber connections at 175 buildings like general practitioner (GP) surgeries, schools and libraries in the county, which is home to nearly 700,000 people. Earlier this year, it announced the addition of 18 more rural sites that previously relied on a copper connection. 

Oxfordshire teamed up with Neos Networks to connect the sites. Light Reading spoke recently with Craig Bower, Oxfordshire County Council's digital Infrastructure consultant, and William Harris, Neos Networks' head of public sector, about the project and Oxfordshire's plans to further harness fiber as well as 5G for local government projects.

Focusing on long-term benefits

Oxfordshire chose Neos as a partner for this project mainly because of its ability to aggregate offers from multiple providers on a site-by-site basis. "They were taking the best of the economic and technical capabilities from a range of providers such as Openreach, Virgin Media, and Gigaclear, which is a local Oxfordshire-based company," Bower said. 

The selection of Neos was partly based on Oxfordshire's focus on costs over the project's 20-year duration, rather than upfront costs, Harris noted. The latter, he added, is more common and usually leads to councils working with Openreach. Oxfordshire's approach has meant that where available, some sites were connected using dark fiber, which is more flexible than a standard connection.

"If a site wants to go up to 1 gig or 10 gig or even 100 gig, in theory, the only cost really is the cost of equipment you put on the end," said Harris. While the upfront costs are quite high, Harris and Bower both noted spreading them over 20 years helps mitigate the problem. 

"What we found is that having provided services using Gigaclear and VM [Virgin Media] and ourselves, pretty much all of those sites have signed up to taking the service because there's a real advantage to them doing it," Harris said.

Bower, meanwhile, noted that the nature of the solution means it only makes sense where there is a high probability that the building will continue to be used to offer public services over a long period. This is determined by an algorithm.

Part of the benefit is cost savings for the sites involved. Some of them had previously relied on a leased line connection, which is much more expensive. Typically, a 100 megabit connection would cost £5,000 (US$6,380) or £6,000 ($7,656) a year, compared to £700 ($893) to £800 ($1,021) for a gigabit fiber connection, Bower said.

Bringing public services to communities

Central government funding acted as a catalyst for the project, with £2 million ($2.6 million) allocated by the UK Government's Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). "If they hadn't said, here's a pot of money that we're willing to invest on this, we probably wouldn't have gotten around to doing it," Bower acknowledged. Nevertheless, he noted that using dark fiber reduces costs of broadband in the long term. 

The council also provided £5 million ($6.4 million) in funding, partly relying on proceeds from a profit-sharing agreement with Openreach, which had connected around 200,000 premises in the area to fiber. Some of the funds generated went towards connecting community centers, such as village halls, in rural areas to fiber.

This is an option that often gets overlooked in rural areas, according to Bower, but one that can drive significant benefits. With a broadband connection, the centers can be used to provide services at a local community level, such as triage, or for education on how to use things like the NHS app.

While community centers aren't owned by Oxfordshire County Council, it is paying for the broadband connection for the first three years as it allows for expanding the number of possible uses for these buildings. Moreover, the initiative can also boost digital inclusion and make it cheaper to connect surrounding buildings to fiber.

Future plans

Going forward, the use of community centers could even expand further. Bower said the council is planning to use the installed fiber as backhaul for 5G, possibly installing a small cell on the roof. The 5G network would then be used to create mobile diagnostic centers, which would be able to do things like breast cancer screening, using the connection to send data to hospitals where they could be interpreted, possibly using AI. 

However, there are several difficulties. "The provision of the technology aspect is actually the relatively easy part. The really hard part is engaging with different parts of the NHS," Bower said, adding that de-risking the project and ensuring health and safety measures are implemented well make this a complicated initiative. 

Nevertheless, Bower appeared confident the challenges could be overcome. "Once you've got the technology platform in as the enabler then it's worthwhile making the effort to pull these things together, and there is a lot of interest across the NHS in doing exactly this kind of thing," he said.

The council also has plans to boost elderly care. Bower said wireless technology has an advantage here because it doesn't require a connection and router to be installed, cutting down on the complexity for the end user.

For example, a 5G small cell could be mounted on a street light opposite a house and support multiple IoT sensors. These could monitor things like how many times a day the fridge is opened, as well as ascertaining hydration levels, whether a person falls down often, etc. As a result, elderly people could live independently for longer. 

Other uses are also envisioned, with Bower saying there is fiber available at Oxford's train station, which means "we can start thinking about building a 5G corridor up from the train station into the central Oxford." This can then be used, for example, to install smart lighting infrastructure and air quality sensors, to monitor e-bike location, or to provide video and augmented reality (VR and AR) experiences for tourists.

Oxfordshire is also part of the UK government-funded 5G Innovation Regions initiative, under which it has received £3.8 million ($4.85 million). Part of this project was connecting a section of the East West Railway and Oxfordshire may further leverage this in the future by working with the NHS on projects including blood pressure tests at train stations.