Welsh Gov Appoint FarrPoint to Survey Superfast Broadband Coverage

The Welsh Government (WG) have this week appointed FarrPoint to undertake an Open Market Review (OMR) to provide an “updated view of superfast broadband connectivity” across Wales at the premises level. The move is intended to help inform their £70m (public subsidy) Extending High Speed Broadband (EHSB) project.

Regular readers may recall that the WG issued a tender notice for their EHSB project in October 2025 (here), which is funded by £70m that was “clawed back” from BT (Openreach) as part of the original Superfast Cymru project several years ago (i.e. public funding returned for reinvestment as take-up increased).

The goal of the EHSB project, which is intended to complement the UK Government’s wider £5bn Project Gigabit programme, is to help extend faster broadband to around 29,000 premises in poorly served areas (i.e. locations that can’t yet access 30Mbps+ speeds) – reflecting a per premises public subsidy of just over £2,400. In other words, the bits that even Project Gigabit is expected to miss due to high build costs etc.

The current design for the EHSB framework includes two LOTS. The first LOT, valued at £60m, will be for projects that require the installation of broadband network infrastructure to 1,000 premises and over (this sounds like cluster sizing). The second LOT, valued at £10m, will be for projects that require the installation of broadband network infrastructure to under 1,000 premises (i.e. smaller communities). Suppliers are permitted to apply for either or both lots.

The WG previously said they expected “the first Framework [would] commence early 2026 with the first call-off contract under the Framework being awarded shortly thereafter“. But it seems like this may take a little bit longer than planned, particularly as we’re almost at the end of that “early 2026” window, and they’ve just contracted FarrPoint to conduct a new OMR for £50k excluding VAT.

The goal of an OMR is to provide the most up-to-date view of broadband coverage and future deployment plans, which will help the government and any potential suppliers for their EHSB project to identify precisely which premises will need public support to receive better connectivity. As a result we may see that 29,000 premises estimate change (again) by the final contract award.

“This is a three month contract comprising of an initial one month period of pre consultation work undertaken in March/April 2026 with the subsequent market review element running for the final two month contract period in June and July of 2026,” said the related contract details notice.

We’ll of course have to wait until the WG starts awarding their EHSB contracts to supplies before being able to know precisely how many premises will benefit, how much of the funding will be applied and what network technologies are to be used (FTTP is highly likely).