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).

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