Swansea Bay City Deal’s Digital Infrastructure Scheme Given Green Rating
The Swansea Bay City Deal’s Digital Infrastructure Programme, which includes various broadband and other digital infrastructure upgrades as part of the wider £1.3bn Swansea Bay City Region project, has received a green rating in its latest Gateway Review, which is said to reflect its progress in improving digital connectivity across the region.
Just to recap. The UK and Welsh Governments gave approval for a £55m digital infrastructure investment under the Swansea Bay City Region project back in 2021 (here), which among other things aimed to expand full fibre and 5G mobile connectivity to benefit homes and businesses across Carmarthenshire, Neath Port Talbot, Pembrokeshire and Swansea. Some of this investment also comes from the Local Broadband Fund (LBF) for Wales.
A number of related projects have since been awarded and made good progress, such as the £1.9m Full Fibre Infrastructure Build project with BT that helped to upgrade 69 key public sector sites (here). As a result, the Office for Project Delivery’s independent review team has now awarded the highest possible rating to the programme, stating that delivery to time, cost and quality is highly likely, with no major issues affecting progress.
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Sadly, there isn’t yet a link to this review because it’s still due to be put through programme governance. But it is said to have “praised the programme’s agile delivery, strong stakeholder relationships, and the role of Digital Champions within each local authority“, who have been key in driving delivery, removing barriers and aligning public and private sector investment.
Simon Davies, Senior Responsible Owner for the programme, told ISPreview:
“I welcome the findings of this Gateway Review and am pleased that the Review Team has confirmed the programme is on track for successful delivery. Strong governance, stakeholder engagement and effective management have been key to our success. I’m especially proud of the impact our Broadband Engagement Officers and Digital Connectivity Relationship Managers have had in supporting communities and businesses across the region.”
Looking ahead, work is now said to be underway to explore the programme’s future beyond 2027, which may help to ensure the long-term sustainability of its projects and economic impact in the region.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Great News, It is good to see the UK and WG taking this momentum and running with it.
Its about time more emphasis is placed on locations outside of “The Westminster bubble”, London along with the other major metro area who seem to always get the lions share, rather than, with a focus on bringing *everybody* along with them for the ride.
it seems The Swansea “Bay area” now includes parts of Carmarthenshire, where I assume there are joint pot sharing arrangements amongst the local authorities of surrounding constituencies, which is a good thing as this means (In theory) better bang for the buck, sort of speak with the added Economies of scale through local cooperation agreements. I live just outside of Swansea and we are served very well, with a number of ISP’s now offering Gigabit speeds and the odd altnet who can provide multi-gig (7-8Gbps last check)
Finally, this is a timely move with the rapid adoption of AI seemingly involved in almost every aspect of our lives, readily available access to LLM models at our fingertips, a ready supply of free tokens; it only makes sense the WG/UK Gov invest in high speed, High quality Network infrastructure.
Maybe some of this funding can be set aside for more data-centres being built & hosted in Wales!
I live near crosshands and my half of the street has been according to openreach in and out of scope several times is now ‘we have not plans ‘ so we are are stuck on FTTC
In fact Wales hosts one of the largest data centres in Europe (see https://vantage-dc.com/data-center-locations/emea/cardiff-united-kingdom/) a complex of 2m sq ft spanning across 48 acres with 148Mw critical IT load. In addition, there are significant new data centre developments planned for Wales, primarily led by Vantage Data Centers with large-scale plans for the former Ford plant in Bridgend and the Bro Tathan business park in the Vale of Glamorgan, alongside Microsoft’s planned AI-enabled data centres in Newport.
Re. Aw – Crosshands FTTC
I’m the Broadband Engagement Officer at Carmarthenshire County Council. Please email broadband@carmarthenshire.gov.uk and I’ll look to see if we have further details about future connectivity plans for your address.
done ,email sent thanks
I live in Tenby and my estate (SA70 8JE), which is the biggest in town has been left behind by Openreach because of a few blocked ducts. OGI have now given up on building in Tenby now too, so looks like I’m stuck with my useless FTTC connection for a long time.
I’ve had 6 Openreach engineers out this year alone, the lines are that great on my estate!
Hello Ben
I’m the Broadband Engagement Officer at Pembrokeshire County Council. Please email broadband@pembrokeshire.gov.uk and we’ll look to see if we have further details about future connectivity plans for your address.