Plaid Cymru Sets Out Welsh Broadband Plans in 2024 Manifesto

The Party of Wales (Plaid Cymru) has today become the latest political party to publish a Manifesto for the 4th July 2024 UK General Election, which we’ll take a brief look at below because it includes a couple of commitments related to broadband and mobile connectivity.

The Plaid Cymru Manifesto for the Westminster General Election 2024 (PDF) document, which has just been published this morning, states that it would “seek to invest in our digital infrastructure and guarantee a high-speed connection to every home and business“, albeit without giving a clear timescale or any funding figures (there’s also a question mark over how they define “high-speed“).

However, after digging a bit deeper into the document, we did manage to uncover the following statement: “Plaid Cymru has previously called for the establishment of a Welsh Broadband Infrastructure Company. We have also called for the UK Government to release more Project Gigabit money increasing the investment to tackle the “very hard to reach areas” or the “total not-spots” where there is no fast broadband or 4G signal at all and bring the timescales forward. We will also push for more investment in alternative technology projects especially in the “very hard to reach” areas e.g. small cell projects / Fixed Wireless Access.”

Overall, it’s quite vague, but the important thing is that they’re at least referencing digital infrastructure as an area that needs further improvement, which is always a positive thing. But like so many other election manifestos, we’d really like to see a bit more detail on the delivery, funding and timescale side.

In particular, we’d like to know more about how their Welsh Broadband Infrastructure Company would work and how it would fit in with the country’s existing selection of competitive operators and network build, such as the ongoing projects from Virgin Media / nexfibre, Openreach, Netomnia, Ogi and others.