ISP Ogi Reveals Next Areas in Wales for FTTP Broadband Rollout UPDATE

The next three areas to benefit from Ogi’s £200m project (here), which aims to deploy a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network to cover 150,000 premises in South Wales by 2025, have today been named – Dinas Powys, Milford Haven and Johnston and Monmouth.

The rollout, which is backed by Infracapital and last year started work across Haverfordwest (Pembrokeshire), Abergavenny (Monmouthshire), Rhoose and Llantwit Major (Vale of Glamorgan), will see each of the three new communities benefitting from an investment of around £5-6 million – helping to cover “thousands more homes and businesses.”

Customers of the new service can expect to pay from £35 per month (currently £25 for the first 6 months) for an unlimited service with downloads of 150Mbps (15Mbps upload), free installation (usually £60) and an included wireless router (a mesh system on their faster plans) on a 24-month term, which rises to £55 for their top 900Mbps (90Mbps upload) plan.

Lee Waters MS said:

“The impact of fast, affordable broadband for homes and businesses across Wales cannot be underestimated, supporting a thriving and sustainable vision for our future.

Ogi is helping to realise faster speeds, greater access and better support for places that have previously found it harder to connect.” He added, “This news is especially important at the moment with so many people working from home where a reliable broadband connection is vital.”

Ben Allwright, Ogi’s CEO, said:

“We’re delighted to be kicking off the new year by announcing the next communities to benefit from Ogi’s home-grown broadband. We’re building an all-new infrastructure from scratch, adding to the thousands of homes that already have access to our services, and are on track to bring our ultrafast connection to many more across Wales this year.”

Broadband speeds in Wales have been too slow for people and businesses for too long, so this is where the transformation begins. With the increased need for fast and reliable broadband, the digital divide in Wales has continued to grow. Ogi is changing that, and helping to transform the digital landscape for generations to come.”

Sadly, exact coverage figures and timescales for each of the newly added communities have not been provided, although the operator’s build only started in June 2021, and we note that they’d already passed 4,565 households by November 2021 (here). At present they’re still in the early stages of ramping-up, so we should see the rate of build continue to increase through 2022.

The operator is being supported by a number of civil engineering contractors in different regions of Wales, including O’Conner Utilities (Central South Wales), Avonline Networks (South East Wales) and Network Plus (South West Wales).

UPDATE 1:56pm

Ogi informs that this next phase will aim to add around 18,000 premises to their coverage and the first homes in these new communities should start connecting from April 2022.