Welsh Government Suspends ABC Broadband Voucher Scheme

The Welsh Government (WG) has chosen to “pause” their long-running Access Broadband Cymru (ABC) grant scheme, which offered funding to help rural homes get a faster broadband service installed in areas of slow connectivity. But given the greater focus on gigabit-capable connections, ABC was starting to look a bit dated.

The ABC scheme has been running for quite a few years and offered vouchers to homes in poorly served areas that aren’t currently planned to benefit from either commercial or other state-aid funded deployment projects. By poorly served, we mean areas which don’t have access to a “superfast connection” speed of 30Mbps+ (i.e. £400 for 10Mbps+ or £800 for 30Mbps+).

However, the UK Government’s £5bn Project Gigabit broadband rollout programme has long since set a more ambitious target, which aims to help extend 1000Mbps (download) capable broadband networks to reach at least 85% of UK premises by the end of 2025 (currently 83.4%) and then “nationwide” coverage (c. 99%) by 2030 (here). But the latter figure is an average, and actual coverage may vary around the country.

On top of that, there’s also the 10Mbps broadband USO and the UK’s central Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme (GBVS), which offers grants worth up to £4,500 to rural homes and businesses to help them get a gigabit-capable broadband service installed. Admittedly the GBVS is currently suspended across much of the UK (including Wales), which is partly due to clashing with the aims of the wider subsidised build contracts under Project Gigabit.

Suffice to say that the ABC scheme was in need of some revision and so the WG has opted to “pause” it from 7th August 2024.

WG Statement

We are pausing the Access Broadband Cymru grant scheme from 7 August 2024.

The pause will allow us to:

– update the scheme to reflect new broadband technology and market changes
– review grant limits and how the scheme is run to keep it targeted, flexible, and responsive.

The pause should last no more than 6 months.

Applications received up to and including 6 August 2024 will be assessed and processed normally.

The six-month pause will also give the Building Digital UK (BDUK) agency and the WG enough time to award their long-in-gestation Project Gigabit rollout contracts to a supplier, which for a big chunk of the country is expected to be Openreach (BT). This is because most of Wales has been designed for a Cross regional (Type-C) procurement and BT are the preferred bidder for those, due to a lack of industry interest from other networks (here).

Put another way, the WG will have a better idea of which areas and what solutions they need to target for future vouchers once those contracts have been awarded, which helps to avoid duplication of the public investment.