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.
