Rural Village Gets Ultrafast Broadband – Still Waiting for Water

Generally speaking broadband connectivity, while considered by many in the UK to now be an essential utility, is by no means as important as running water or electricity. As such we tend to expect the latter two to be present almost everywhere but tell that to the tiny rural village of Hebron (Wales, Carmarthenshire).

Residents of Hebron are in a perhaps somewhat unusual situation, albeit only partly because they’re living in a remote rural community where Openreach (BT) has recently been able to install the very latest Gigabit capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) ultrafast broadband ISP technology. The optical fibre for that can be seen gracefully swinging its way between local overhead telegraph poles.

However, in a reverse of the usual expectations, Hebron is also a village where mains water has yet to reach. Instead locals still have to rely on wells and bore holes for their supply, with the latter potentially costing about £8,000 to do on a single property. Ouch.

Councillor Dorian Phillips said (Tenby Observer):

“I have been in touch with Welsh Water and there is no statutory duty on them to provide mains water and unfortunately we are looking at hundreds of thousands of pounds in cost to lay the pipes as the nearest main is about a kilometre away.”

We should point out that quite a lot of rural communities across the United Kingdom have now got faster broadband than many urban areas via FTTP/H, which is thanks to a combination of work by alternative network ISPs (B4RN, Gigaclear etc.) and Openreach (BT). In the case of Openreach and Gigaclear, most of the related deployments have been supported by state aid via the Broadband Delivery UK programme.

Admittedly the number of premises that have benefited in this way is at a much smaller scale than FTTP coverage in urban areas. Nevertheless it’s surprising to find a village that can now get the very latest in ultrafast broadband technology and yet something as common as mains water hasn’t reached them.

Otherwise it may surprise some readers to learn that, unlike in the telecoms sector, there is no formal Universal Service Obligation (USO) in place for the water industry, although it could be argued that there is an implied USO (i.e. a single price for a consistent level of service). Perhaps the water industry and regulator (Ofwat) could learn a few things from the many challenges that broadband builders have had to overcome.