Progress Update for Wales Full Fibre Broadband Rollout with BT

The Welsh Government (WG) has issued their first quarterly progress update on the £22.5m Phase 2 contract they have with Openreach (BT), which aims to extend gigabit-capable “full fibre” (FTTP) broadband to a further 26,000 premises by March 2021 (here and here). So far 8,283 rural premises have been completed.

The Next Generation Broadband Wales (Superfast Cymru) contract itself is actually focused upon upgrading the remaining areas (mostly remote rural ones), which means those that cannot currently receive a “superfast broadband” (30Mbps+) speed – currently understood to reflect roughly 4% of premises (homes and businesses) across Wales.

Sadly 26,000 premises only represents a small part of the remaining gap, but at least it’s progress and the use of Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) technology is welcome. Nevertheless the last Open Market Review (OMR) in late 2019 – responsible for examining existing and future coverage over the next 3 years (here) – revealed that a total of 96,111 premises were still classified as needing future intervention.

However one thing we haven’t had since the Phase 2 deployment began last year is an update on its progress. The good news is that the WG has this week responded to a question by Russell George (MWP for Montgomeryshire) with one of their first quarterly progress updates up to the end of March 2020.

Overall Openreach informed the WG that 8,283 premises have now been given access to full fibre connectivity under the latest contract. All of these premises are subject to further assurance by the WG and so far 4,194 have been checked through this process (this work is ongoing).

As usual it’s important to remember that Openreach have continued to deliver the new network despite significant disruption being caused by the COVID-19 pandemic through March and onwards. The good news is that a lot of network operators are now adapting to the problems caused by lockdown related restrictions and so the pace of build – across the UK – is gradually getting back on track. Credits to one of our readers (Steve) for spotting the update.