Funding
A project of this scale involves significant investment – which is precisely why costs for all components of the network will be extremely transparent. Specifically, these include:
- The building and management of broadband services and interconnection to other networks.
- Providing customer support, fault resolution and service management.
- The procurement of connectivity services (i.e., availability, bandwidth, resilience and security) from the telecoms marketplace.
Migration to The PSBA Network is already underway. For some sectors and organisations, the initial order has already been placed – for others this is imminent. In either case, rest assured support and advice is on hand to help you in the decision-making process.
What will it cost?
The PSBA commercial model provides a high degree of visibility of the component service costs. This includes visibility of the costs associated with:
- Building and running the backhaul services and gateways
- Providing customer support, fault resolution and service management
- Purchasing connectivity services from the telecommunication market place to meet user requirements
Furthermore, each sector has the opportunity to present these costs to end users in a variety of ways to varying degrees of transparency. Therefore, the true service cost to end users will depend upon both the service required and the sector in which the organisation falls.
However, given that connectivity services are purchased in high volumes by the PSBA supplier on behalf of Partnering organisations, it is expected that the service costs will be favourable when compared to market prices.
This is the case for the Initial Order for which firm pricing is now available. It can be noted that funding arrangements will vary across sectors. If your organisation falls into the Initial Order, contact either the PSBA project office or your sector representative to discuss the costs in more detail.
Who will pay?
All our partnering sectors have contributed towards a single, pooled budget to provide the core infrastructure for the project. This infrastructure includes elements that are common to everyone, including the development and deployment of the network itself, support services such as a help-desk; along with service portal, service monitoring, reporting, billing and technical design support.
What happens when other sectors start using PSBA services?
The PSBA services are controlled by the governance structures, including a PSBA Programme Board. This board will need to approve the inclusion of additional Sectors within the PSBA user community. This approval process will include defining the terms under which a new Sector might join the community. Given that, as new Sectors begin using PSBA services, the unit price falls for each Sector, this approval process will include consideration of the impact of any potential savings.