North Wales Sets Out Gigabit Full Fibre Plan to Connect Public Sites
The North Wales Economic Ambition Board (NWEAB) has today set out its plan for investing up to £7m from Wave 3 of the UK Government’s Local Full Fibre Networks (LFFN) programme, which will see Gigabit capable fibre and “ultrafast broadband” services being used to connect up to 400 further public sector sites.
The plan, which seems likely to complement the forthcoming North Wales Growth Deal (expected in 2020), will work to improve connectivity for GP surgeries, libraries, hospitals and social services across the counties of Denbighshire, Wrexham, Conwy, Flintshire, Anglesey and Gwynedd in North Wales.
Overall thirteen public sector organisations (e.g. Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board) are currently in scope to benefit from the investment in North Wales, which follows similar investment led by Welsh Government in its LiDW projects to deliver fibre connectivity to schools in recent years.
Advertisement
The upgrades to end sites will be undertaken by BT though the Wales-wide Public Sector Broadband Aggregation (PSBA) contract. This already provides connectivity to nearly 5,000 public sites in Wales.
Dyfrig Siencyn, Gwynedd Council Leader and Chair of the NWEAB, said:
“This illustrates our level of ambition in North Wales when it comes to improving digital connectivity.
Our residents and businesses depend on us to deliver high quality public services and having connectivity is essential to that, whether it is in schools, libraries or in health centres.
We have to keep pace with what technology can offer our communities and not be left behind other regions who recognise the value of full fibre broadband.
This was a competitive process and our success is due to close collaboration and partnership working regionally and nationally, with support from colleagues in Welsh Government and the NHS.
The Growth Deal is our next target and we will continue to work with Government and industry to deliver a credible plan for further significant investment in connectivity.”
Margot James, UK Minster for Digital, said:
“We’re building a Britain that’s fit for the future, and our plans for a national full fibre broadband network underpin our modern Industrial Strategy.
This £7m boost for gigabit speeds in Northern Wales will benefit homes and businesses in rural areas and I congratulate the North Wales Economic Ambition Board in its successful Bid.”
Surveying work is due to start this month, with installation then running through to the end of 2020. A significant number of premises in the bid – over 100 – are said to be GP surgeries in both large towns and small villages.
Eventually even businesses and homes could benefit as the new network could support future Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) services from ISPs, although at this stage that is more of an aspiration (i.e. not part of this investment).
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
« Full Fibre ISP Zzoomm Preps UK Rollout with £2.5m Supply Deal
if my calculations are right that works out at an eye-watering £17,500 per site!
Now if this investment also brought FTTP to residents in the surrounding area of the public sector sites at the same time, then the cost could have been justified. But it looks like more money will have to be spent on that…
Also whatever happened to Fibrespeed? This £30M network was meant to revolutionise, connectivity in North Wales….
The reality is that it does cost a lot of money to bring leased line style bespoke connectivity to individual sites, particularly those in more remote areas.
Cityfibre adopted a similar anchor tenancy approach with many of their early Dark Fibre networks and a few years later they’re able to build on that to reach homes.
Sometimes you have to jump through A,B,C,D.. etc. first, rather than trying to go from A to Z all at once. Likewise contracts like this aren’t strictly allowed to cover homes at the same time because that might raise state aid concerns.
Fibrespeed is still there and great for bringing capacity to the places it stops at, the issue is getting from the Fibrespeed spine to individual sites not on the various Business Parks that are on the spine.
Haha stop writing about something that doesn’t exist in this country.
I seem to remember a few years ago there was a scheme to cover the whole of Wales with fibre? What happened to it?
Openreach built the infrastructure but then stopped due to WAG cutting funding. Roads, towns and villages across north wales have fibre wrapped around telephone poles and dumped in hedges. Three years later nothing. WAG incompetence as expected.