Gigabit network for Waltham Forest

London’s first Borough of Culture, Waltham Forest have an exceptional opportunity to build a Gigabit network within the Borough, through utilising our existing assets and infrastructure.
As a fast growing borough we aspire to provide and become a ‘Gigabit Borough for All’ and are seeking to fully understand and explore how we as a Council, could be a direct catalyst and an enabler in addressing current and future connectivity requirements, opportunities and challenges.

As a Council, we have established a barrier busting programme board to support connectivity and multiple practical initiatives have already been adopted and progressed, including free public wireless in our Town Centres and targeted market engagement, to help us understand the potential opportunities. Beyond these initiatives, the Council recognises that there is an absolute need to consider and implement a wider enablement strategy, with the scale and scope to transform connectivity across the Borough.

We now want to further engage the market, by detailing our own assets and infrastructure, and making these available for the improvement of current connectivity levels. Along with our assets we have detailed other information we though may be useful, including public buildings, town centre locations and social housing density. We aim to attract investment and to develop a platform for enabling digital transformation, fibre speed connectivity for residents and businesses and the provision of a digital platform for IOT in the future.

The information can be found here: www.walthamforest.gov.uk/digital-mapping/

To ensure the Council fully understands all potential opportunities, now and into the future, we would like to ask the following questions of the market:

1. Confirm your firm interest in exploiting your strengths while working with the Council.

2. How could you exploit our assets and infrastructure to generate commercial returns and interest form the market to potentially attract further investment?

3. We’ve shared with you some of our plans what else should we do to deliver our ambitious goals?

4. The aim of this is to break down barriers – how can we help and how can we, as a Council, ensure these are eliminated or reduced?

5. How can you support our business community to encourage greater business retention and attract further investment, through the availability of accessible and affordable business broadband services?

6. What successful initiatives have you participated in or seen in other Boroughs, that you feel could easily be transferred to Waltham Forest?

7. What additional social and economic value could be generated and leveraged through allowing the use of council owned assets and infrastructure?

8. What is the most cost effective and practical route/routes to engage with the market, attract investment and develop partnerships with the connectivity sector?

The London Borough of Waltham Forest are very keen to hear your thoughts regarding this exciting project and would be grateful if your comments and answers to the above, could be sent back to ‘elliot.deemer@walthamforest.gov.uk’ by 17/07/2018, 12:00 noon.

This information will be used to help shape the future procurement of contract(s), for supporting the delivery of the Gigabit Borough for All.
If your organisation has any additional questions, please feel free to email the contact detailed above and in addition, the Council may contact you in the future to discuss opportunities raised.