Q3 – 2022 Openreach Progress Update on Full Fibre Rollout in Wales
The Welsh Government (WG) has released the Q3 2022 progress update on their £52.5m Phase 2 Superfast Cymru contract with Openreach (BT), which reveals that a total of 34,122 extra premises (up from 32,949 in Q2) have now gained access to their 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network.
The original deal consisted of two contracts, the first one was a £22.5m agreement (target of 26,000 premises by March 2021 – later reduced due to the positive impact of commercial builds) and the second one was a £30m extension (13,000 premises by June 2022). The extension costs more per premises because the cost of build rises disproportionately in remote rural areas.
As usual it’s necessary to remind readers that the WG tweaked their contracted agreement with Openreach during the summer (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 34,122 premises (up from 32,949 in Sept 2022 and 29,959 in Mar 2022). Some 10,068 of these are in the Lot 1 area (North West Wales), while 10,548 are in Lot 2 (East Wales) and 13,506 in Lot 3 (South West Wales).
Completed Premises – Q3 2022 Breakdown by Local Authority
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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.
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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Live in Wrexham and OR have installed on our street. However our flats are off a junction pit, and haven’t been done. So on the checker it says not on the plan! It’s rather annoying. Hopefully Netomnia will!
Try raising it with the relevant Welsh Government officials (copied to Openreach). Your local councillor probably won’t have the clout and possibly not the interest, but if you can identify who, politically, is driving the Welsh broadband programme, and you alert them to Openreach leaving areas out even though they are potentially easy to serve, then something may get done, if only because Openreach want to curry favour with the politicos. The basis of the argument is (perhaps not in such inflammatory terms) OR taking the money to expand the network, but leaving out easily served buildings because they can’t be bothered, rip off for taxpayers, and semi-permanent holes in broadband coverage. If applicable use any relevant levers (social housing left behind, elderly left out or similar). Use multiple political escalations – your local MP, your AM, but also whoever is seen as a political noise maker in terms of Welsh infrastructure.
HI Andrew G, If Netomnia do the the same then I will probable follow down this route. As you rightly say, missing easy fixes is rather a rip off. But as their service is better speed wise, I will hold my breath. Mined you the poles have been strung for a week now and not connected up! LOL!
Thanks.
@David
It isn’t always the case that apartment blocks are easy to connect, depending on access to risers etc. More importantly, it can be surprisingly difficult to gain agreement from building owners to install fibre so it’s worth checking whether this is an issue for your building.