Llancarfan Hails Largest FTTP Community Fibre Partnership in Wales

Gigabit broadband ISP speeds will soon be on their way to all 129 properties in the remote rural Welsh village of Llancarfan (Vale of Glamorgan), which is thanks to a new co-funded Community Fibre Partnership (CFP) project with Openreach (BT). This is said to be the “largest full-fibre … deal of its kind in Wales.“

In the CFP approach Openreach offers to help co-fund the cost of upgrading digitally isolated communities to receive their superfast Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) or ultrafast Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband network, with the rest of the funding coming from residents, businesses and or Government voucher schemes. Areas with a school or charity are also eligible for a related grant of up to £30,000 from the operator.

In this case it sounds like the remaining funding gap that the community would have needed to fill has been significantly reduced after locals were able to harness the Welsh Government’s Access Broadband Cymru (ABC) scheme, which offers vouchers to homes in areas that aren’t currently planned to benefit from the Superfast Cymru project or its follow-on scheme (i.e. £400 for 10Mbps+ or £800 for 30Mbps+).

Martyn Hughes, Chairman of Llancarfan Community Council, said:

“We’re incredibly excited about finally securing ultrafast broadband for Llancarfan and the surrounding community. The delivery of this project will see the entire village connected – including more than 25 businesses and a large number of people who work from home. It will without question digitally transform every aspect of our lives.

It will enable an elderly resident to have video calls with her family in Australia, allow children and students to access educational material online at home, farmers to conduct their business, much of which is internet based, and of course allow access to many other online streaming services enjoyed by most residential households elsewhere.

I would encourage all communities across Wales who are struggling to access an acceptable or cost effective broadband service to investigate the options an Openreach Community Fibre Partnership like ours can offer. For us as a Community Council, leveraging the ‘Access Broadband Cymru’ grant from the Welsh Government and engaging with the Openreach CFP team became an incredibly straightforward and expedient process. The key to the success of this has been the strength and support from the local community.”

Connie Dixon, Openreach Partnership Director for Wales, said:

“It’s great that we’ve been able to work with Martyn and the Llancarfan community to find a broadband solution that works for them. Partnerships like this help us bring high-speed connections to those areas that broadband providers, for a variety of reasons, struggle to upgrade alone.”

Sadly the announcement doesn’t include any information about the costs for the work, although we did a little digging and were able to uncover that the final quote for the deployment came to £66,563 (January 2019 figure). Apparently some 94 properties had each agreed to contribute £708 towards this cost and we assume that most or all of that may now have been covered by the voucher scheme.

The first properties are now expected to get the ultrafast service in March 2020, which reflects a fairly common roll-out window of 12 months.