Q2 2022 Openreach Progress Update on FTTP Rollout in Wales
The Welsh Government (WG) has shared a Q2 2022 progress update on their £52.5 million Phase 2 Superfast Cymru contract with Openreach (BT), which reveals that a total of 32,949 extra premises (up from 29,959 in Q1) have now gained access to a 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network.
The original deal consisted of two contracts or phases, the first one was a £22.5m deal (target of 26,000 premises by March 2021 – later reduced to 20k due to the positive impact of commercial builds) and the second stage was a £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 build rises disproportionately in remote rural areas.
At this point we should remind readers that the WG recently tweaked their contracted agreement with Openreach (here), which pushed the project’s completion date back to 31st March 2023. The number of premises to be built to under the agreed roll-out is now 37,137, which is slightly lower than the originally anticipated 39,000 total premises.
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However, the aforementioned change reflects the fact that commercial fibre builds are reaching further than expected, and some areas also had to be de-scoped from the contract as they were more expensive to tackle than anticipated. But the WG still expects that the “total number of premises to benefit from the project” may actually end up higher than 39,000 premises when the revised rollout finishes early next year.
According to the latest update from the WG, Openreach has so far built their full fibre network to a total of 32,949 premises (up from 29,959 in Mar 2022 and 25,855 in Dec 2021). Some 9,592 of these are in the Lot 1 area (North West Wales), while 10,204 are in Lot 2 (East Wales) and 13,153 in Lot 3 (South West Wales).
Completed Premises – Q2 2022 Breakdown by Local Authority
| LOT/District | Premises |
| 3.1 | 9,592 |
| Ceredigion | 2,275 |
| Conwy | 1,521 |
| Denbighshire | 1,087 |
| Flintshire | 3 |
| Gwynedd | 3,707 |
| Isle of Anglesey | 999 |
| 3.2 | 10,204 |
| Bridgend | 8 |
| Cardiff | 801 |
| Denbighshire | 1 |
| Flintshire | 1,926 |
| Monmouthshire | 1,300 |
| Newport | 267 |
| Powys | 2,718 |
| Vale of Glamorgan | 872 |
| Wrexham | 2,311 |
| 3.3 | 13,153 |
| Bridgend | 1,282 |
| Caerphilly | 2,912 |
| Cardiff | 8 |
| Carmarthenshire | 2,644 |
| Merthyr Tydfil | 468 |
| Neath Port Talbot | 672 |
| Pembrokeshire | 2,540 |
| Rhondda Cynon Taf | 1,558 |
| Swansea | 459 |
| Torfaen | 610 |
| Total THP | 32,949 |
Tens of thousands of premises are still expected to remain poorly served at the end of this contract, but this may yet shrink as a result of commercial builds (e.g. Openreach, Netomnia and Ogi are going much deeper). Some others will hopefully be tackled by the gigabit voucher scheme and community fund, while the rest might have to wait for the £5bn Project Gigabit programme (Welsh Plan) to work its way toward fruition.
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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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Do you have a link to the report Mark? Am keen to understand where this effects.
It’s clear there is a ton of FTTP rollout in the Cardiff/Valleys, North East Wales border with England, plus some apparent rollout in Welshpool and Newtown (apparently these two are due to complete by August 2023).
I’m just curious to know where in Powys these ~3000 properties are.
It was by personal request, so no public links exist. But the summary above covers all the detail they provided, so there’s nothing further to share.
Rural Powys has gone from 27.8% Openreach FTTP to 33.2% since March 2022, which is around 3,000 premises
These will be on map at https://labs.thinkbroadband.com/local/broadband-map#9/52.3135/-3.2890/geafttp/
It took 2 years from when they started working in the area, but i’m glad to say I went from 20mbps dl/4mbps ul FTTC to 900+/115 mbps in Wrexham. My only complaint would be the upload speeds, but can’t have everything!
Netomnia is rolling out in Wrexham, and it seems they are building faster in Wales than openreach is so you may be in luck
Tied in for two years now 🙂 although I don’t mind to be honest, it’s worlds apart from what I had previously, and i’m quite a fan of Zen as an ISP.
Don’t care no mre they jumped over me so what ever virgin will go full firber in few years pointless dealing with bt the even bigger joke is getting hyper optics to install if your the only one that u know of that wants it they don’t care rude as well.
luckily im spoilt for choice here in carmarthenshire BT or VMO2 both offer 1gig as of about 8 or so months ago VM done the whole area. I am coming to the end of my FTTC 24mo contract with vodafone home BB and will be quite hapoy to jump ship to the cheapest /fastest package i can get which looks like VMO2 but i hear terrible billing issues and poor cust. support woes. So, BT 900/110 is looking like where im going to soon.
We are buying into a church conversion in the city centre of Cardiff on Newport road. We work online so the speed is paramount. Didn’t think for a second, that the city centre would be so terrible. In fact BT even chuckled on the phone and apologised when she said our speed would be 0.1MB
CRAZY!
I am crossing all my fingers and toes that there is some hope in the future for us on Newport road? Is there any information at all of superfast coming there? FTTP would be ideal…