Progress Report – 565K Premises in Wales Benefit from Superfast Cymru

The state aid supported Superfast Cymru project, which hopes to push BT’s “fibre broadband” (FTTC/P) network out to 96% of Wales by the end of 2016 (691,000 extra premises) and a further 42,000 premises by June 2017, has today issued a useful region-by-region progress update.

According to a Written Statement from the Welsh Government, some 565,000 residential homes and business premises across all 22 local authorities in Wales have now been upgraded as part of the project.

On top of that a 25% take-up rate is reported for the areas that have benefited (i.e. those with cabinets that have been enabled for 12 months or over), which should in theory return some of the investment via BT in order to further enhance coverage.

So far over £159 million is said to have been invested in the roll-out of superfast broadband under Superfast Cymru, which the update claims has resulted in over 73% of total eligible premises across Wales receiving accesses to “fibre-speed broadband connectivity.”

We also get a rather useful breakdown of progress in every major local authority area of Wales. The * below is said to denote local authorities that have had “no access to superfast broadband connectivity prior to Superfast Cymru intervention“.

So far everything appears to be going according to plan, although there’s still the usual question mark over the eventual coverage of “superfast” (30Mbps+) speeds and take note that the percentages below reflect “eligible premises” (i.e. this won’t always reflect the whole area total for a given region).