Q1 2023 Openreach Progress Update on Wales FTTP Build Contract

The Welsh Government (WG) has released their Q1 2023 progress update on the £52.5m Phase 2 Superfast Cymru contract with Openreach (BT), which confirms that a total of 36,869 extra premises (up from 35,770 in Q4 2022) have now gained access to their gigabit speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network.

The original plan 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 rising impact of commercial builds) and the second one was a £30m extension (13,000 premises by June 2022). The extension costs more per premises passed because the cost of build increases disproportionately as you tackle those increasingly remote rural areas.

However, it’s important to remind readers that the WG tweaked their contract agreement with Openreach last 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 was also adjusted to 37,137, which is slightly lower than the originally anticipated 39,000 total premises.

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 finally finishes.

According to the latest update from the WG, Openreach has so far built their full fibre network to a total of 36,869 premises (up from 35,770 in Q4-22 and 34,122 in Q3-22). Some 10,616 of these are in the Lot 1 area (North West Wales), while 11,615 are in Lot 2 (East Wales) and 14,638 in Lot 3 (South West Wales). Suffice to say, contract completion is now very close, even if it is taking a bit longer.

Take note that there are some edge cases below where the build may, for example, catch the odd property on the boundary of a separate local authority region and thus gets counted in the neighbouring county instead (e.g. the single figure results below).

Completed Premises – Q1 2023 Breakdown by Local Authority

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. On top of that, the WG appear to be exploring a £70m project of their own (here).