Openreach Takes Flak for Unfinished Wales Fibre Broadband Rollout

The Assembly Member for Ceredigion in Wales, Elin Jones, has accused Openreach (BT) of walking away from rural communities in her county after the operator left a roll-out of “fibre broadband” (FTTC/P) technology unfinished in the village of Oakford and possibly other locations.

Ms Jones told the BBC / S4C show Newyddion 9 (skip to 21:00) that the operator had “brought the fibre infrastructure into the middle of the village and yet it hasn’t made the final links into properties. BT has left the job unfinished. Now that the funding from the public purse has come to an end BT has walked away. BT should not be doing that. They have promised in writing that people… would be linked into the superfast infrastructure.”

Pictures from the area and comments from local residents reveal that the operator has, in some cases, simply left their fibre optic cable(s) hanging from local telegraph poles in an unfinished state.

A Spokesman for Openreach said:

“Since the start of the Superfast Cymru we have always been clear that the programme would not reach every premises, and some areas that were in the original plan have unfortunately dropped out because of the time and the complexity involved in reaching them.

We understand the frustration of Derwen Gam [Oakford] residents who currently cannot access fibre broadband but the Welsh Government is already planning the next stage of extending the reach of fast, reliable broadband even further across Wales.”

Unfortunately we have seen quite a few communities drop out of state aid supported “fibre broadband” rollouts across the UK, which can occur for various reasons. For example, engineer surveys may reveal that the work is likely to be significantly more complicated or time consuming (costly) than previously estimated, such as due to blocked or difficult to access cable ducts and problems with access to power or permissions (traffic / planning). On the flip side we have also seen some areas being added back into the programme after previously being excluded, so it’s sometimes a two-way street.

Furthermore it’s worth remembering that the Welsh Government‘s (WG) current Superfast Cymru contract with Openreach doesn’t aim to deliver universal coverage of “superfast broadband” (30Mbps+) across Wales. Instead it aimed to make “fibre broadband” (FTTC/P) services available to around 95% of the country (690,000 premises) by the end of December 2017.

At present 30Mbps+ capable networks are only available to an estimated 93-94% of premises in Wales (here) and invariably this will still leave some communities out in the cold, forced to either wait even longer or to find their own solutions. Openreach is also understood to have faced some difficult challenges in deploying FTTP out to rural parts of the country (here), many of which relate to wayleave disputes with land owners.

The good news is that the WG are developing a new project to reach “every property” with 30Mbps+ broadband by 2020 (here), which is currently in the process of trying to find supplier(s) who can deliver it. This could be rather difficult since tackling the final few % of rural premises is disproportionately expensive and £80m might not be enough to achieve their ambition (even after match funding), at least not solely via fixed lines.