Openreach Complete Build Phase of Wales Full Fibre Contract

The Welsh Government (WG) has released a new update on the £52.5m Phase 2 Superfast Cymru contract with Openreach (BT), which confirms that the “build phase of the contract has now concluded” and a total of 37,497 extra premises (up from 36,869 in Q1) have gained access to their full fibre (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 the more 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.

The change reflected the fact that commercial fibre builds were 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 roll-out finally finishes.

According to the latest update from the WG, Openreach has so far built their full fibre network to a total of 37,497 premises (up from 36,869 in Q1-23 and 35,770 in Q4-22). Some 10,616 (unchanged) of these are in the Lot 1 area (North West Wales), while 11,985 are in Lot 2 (East Wales) and 14,896 in Lot 3 (South West Wales).

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).

However, the WG said that this data, despite the build phase of the contract having now concluded, does “not represent the final figures for the project.” This is said to be because “work is continuing to collate and verify the final number of premises provided with access under the project” and those details should follow later in the year.

Q2 2023 Breakdown by Local Authority

Tens of thousands of premises are still expected to remain poorly served at the end of this project, but that will shrink further as a result of commercial builds (e.g. Openreach, Netomnia and Ogi are all 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.

Speaking of Project Gigabit. Areas across North West Wales, Mid Wales and South East Wales are being included in a cross regional procurement (aka – Type C) that recently launched (here). In addition, the team are planning to launch a regional procurement in North Wales by the end of the year, and they are currently finalising the most appropriate approach for South West Wales.

Type C procurements will appoint a single supplier to target premises (i.e. subsidise the design, build and operation of a new gigabit network) in areas where no or no appropriate market interest has been expressed before, or areas that have been de-scoped or terminated from a prior plan. Such procurements tend to favour the appointment of a single large supplier.

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