Rebecca Evans MS, Cabinet Secretary for Economy, Energy and Planning
The Welsh Government has consistently invested in the non-devolved area of improving access to fast and reliable digital connectivity. For well over a decade our targeted interventions have used European funding to leverage UK Government funding and in doing so have transformed broadband availability across Wales. Superfast Cymru brought superfast broadband to 733,000 premises and our successor scheme brought full fibre broadband to a further 44,000 premises. The latest Ofcom data now shows that over 97 per cent of premises in Wales can access at least superfast broadband and 78 per cent of residential premises can access a gigabit capable service.
The broadband landscape has changed dramatically over recent years. There are many new companies actively rolling out infrastructure and services, complementing established companies that continue to extend their full fibre gigabit capable networks. Where this active and competitive market is not able to reach, the UK Government, through its Project Gigabit programme, and others are extending gigabit coverage still further.
Despite the efforts of the telecommunications industry and public sector interventions there are still premises that do not have access to at least superfast broadband speeds and are not in any plans for delivery over the next three years. We have developed the business case for a project, the Extending High Speed Broadband project, to address this gap and provide fast and reliable broadband to remaining premises.
The project is being carefully planned and coordinated to ensure that we complement other commercial and public sector interventions, allowing the broadband market to reach as far as it can and enhancing the UK Government’s investment in Wales.
Our 2022 open market review identified up to 84,000 initial premises that could be addressed by the project. However, we are now confident that the number of premises has since drastically reduced as the scope of commercial and other public sector deployments, including Project Gigabit, have become clearer. The list of target premises will continue to be revised to reflect the removal from scope of those premises addressed by other interventions. We currently anticipate that the number of premises in scope will be in the region of 25,000-30,000.
The Extending High Speed Broadband project will be funded from £70 million clawed back from the original Superfast Cymru project.
The dynamic nature of the telecommunications market means that we are taking a flexible approach to this initiative. This will entail establishing a framework of telecommunications suppliers capable of addressing the remaining premises. Once the framework has been created, we will then offer a series of competitive call-off contracts to grant fund suppliers from the framework to address groups of premises. The call-offs will be offered in two Lot types, under 1,000 premises and over 1,000 premises, to stimulate interest from a broad range of potential suppliers. Taking this approach will also allow the project to flex to accommodate any changes to the initial list of target premises and to address small communities that have been left unserved. We anticipate that the first call-off will be offered in the Autumn of this year with work on the ground starting as soon as possible thereafter. These call-offs will yield delivery projects that will take a number of years to complete due to the nature of infrastructure planning, preparation and delivery.
I will provide a further update in due course.