Q3 2021 Update on BT FTTP Broadband Rollout Progress in Wales
The Welsh Government has issued a Q3 2021 progress update on their £52.5m Phase 2 Superfast Cymru contract with BT (Openreach), which confirms that 24,515 premises (up from 20,490 in Q2) have now gained access to the operator’s 1Gbps Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network.
Just to recap. The related contract consists of two stages, the original £22.5m deal (target of 26,000 premises by March 2021) and a more recent £30m extension (13,000 premises by June 2022). The reason why the extension costs more, yet doesn’t go as far, is because the cost of deployment rises disproportionately as you enter increasingly remote rural communities.
According to the latest update from the WG, Openreach has so far built their full fibre network to a total of 24,515 premises (from 20,490 in June 2021, 19,919 in March 2021, 15,649 in Dec 2020, 14,698 in Sept 2020 and 9,895 in June 2020) – of these 6,200 are in the Lot 1 area (North West Wales), 8,104 in Lot 2 (East Wales) and 10,211 in Lot 3 (South West Wales).
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On the surface, it may seem as if the first target of 26,000 premises was missed, but that aim was actually reduced to 20,000 premises due to the positive impact of commercial builds, as well as the re-phasing of work to make the rollout more efficient and the switch of some areas from FTTC to FTTP technology (here). Not to mention that COVID-19 hasn’t helped.
Admittedly, tens of thousands of premises are still expected to remain poorly served at the end of this contract, but that figure may yet shrink as a result of commercial builds (e.g. Openreach and Ogi are going much deeper). The rest will probably be tackled by the WG’s voucher schemes and community fund, while others may have to wait for the UK’s £5bn Project Gigabit scheme (Welsh Plan).
Completed Premises – Q3 2021 Breakdown by Local Authority
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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.
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Some of the most expensive broadband in the world being installed by BT here.
In Romania 1Gbps FTTP costs £7.50 a month.
YES – Seven Pounds and Fifty Pence a month for 1000/400 Meg FTTP.
WE are being monumentally ripped off by BT’s comedy prices here.
Country to country comparisons are a veritable minefield and best avoided. For example:
Average monthly salary in Romania = c.£500 vs c.£2000 in the UK.
So take that £7.50 and times it by four, you get £30 per month. So that’s 1Gbps in B4RN and toob land, as well as a few other altnets.
Lest we also forget that around 40% of people in Romania live in apartments / fats (MDUs), which are much cheaper to serve with FTTP. By comparison, only 15% of the UK live in those. And I haven’t even touched on differences in funding and the market (competition etc.).
Not part of this roll out but I think part of the commercial roll out, lots of CBTs installed on poles all over Llandudno Junction including my pole, the fibre has been spanned overhead between the poles.
The rest has been left all coiled up on the poles awaiting the next steps and it’s teasing me every time I go out the door.
Just want to say I love your site, it’s been a reliable news for me since at least 2016 (I think 2014 earliest). Keep up the great work <3
£1346 per home. Seems to be costing a lot of money and taking a very long time. Perhaps we should get a Romanian builder to do it!
Personally the most annoying part of the FTTP rollout is my area nut available yet…. But the equipment to run FTTP 100 meters to 8 houses (where is of orederable) runs underground to a pole directly outside my house then overhead to the properties. Look what you cannot have!
Geth,
Have you tried filling in the Availability Checker Enquiry form?
https://www.openreach.com/forms/fibre-broadband-availability—customer-form
Question : Please tell us what your fibre broadband enquiry is about:
Select I cannot get fibre but my neighbours can
I’ve had success a couple of times in the past where the database was out of date.