Pembrokeshire Celebrate Passing 60 Percent Gigabit Broadband Cover

The Pembrokeshire County Council (Cyngor Sir Penfro) in Wales has celebrated the news that 60% of local premises can now access gigabit-speed full fibre (FTTP) broadband (up from just 5% in 2019). But this is still well behind the UK’s current level of gigabit coverage, which stands at over 85%, due largely to the remote rural nature of the county.

This achievement is said to be the “culmination of a concerted effort by various stakeholders“, including Alternative Networks (AltNets) like Ogi, Voneus and Dragon Wifi, as well as Openreach (BT) and the local authority’s dedicated Digital Champions, who have “continuously engaged with communities to ensure they are aware of the benefits of being better connected and the ways in which they can make that happen“.

The local fixed line coverage has all been delivered by Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) technology, which is because Virgin Media’s older Hybrid Fibre Coax (HFC) network was never been extended into Pembrokeshire. Some Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) coverage also exists from providers like Voneus, but this doesn’t count toward the aforementioned figure for gigabit coverage.

Cllr Paul Miller said:

“Thanks to the hard work of all the stakeholders and this local authority’s Digital Champions, we’re thrilled to see Pembrokeshire reach 60 per cent broadband coverage.

This is a testament to their dedication to bridging the digital divide and ensuring all our residents have access to the critical tools they need to succeed in today’s economy. Pembrokeshire County Council is committed to supporting this type of innovative programmes, and I look forward to seeing Pembrokeshire reach even greater levels of connectivity.”

Further connectivity improvements are expected to flow from both the Swansea Bay City Region project and the UK Government’s ongoing £5bn Project Gigabit scheme. The latter of which recently awarded several contracts that will see Openreach extending their FTTP roll-out into rural parts of Wales (here).

At present, the Project Gigabit contracts awarded for Wales don’t yet extend into South West Wales, but we are expecting Openreach to win the ‘Call Off 3’ contract any day now. This is valued at £136.1m (state aid) and could see FTTP being extended to cover 49,600 additional premises across remote rural parts of East and South Shropshire, North Herefordshire, North Wales, and South West Wales.