Network operator Openreach (BT) has today announced that the rural village of Llanbrynmair in Powys (Wales) can lay claim to being the “first telephone exchange area in the UK” on their network to have 100% Full Fibre broadband coverage, meaning every single home and property in the village can now access their Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) lines.
The village itself, which is home to a population of around 1,000 (or over 500 premises), appears to have been upgraded with financial support from the UK Government’s Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme (GBVS) and Openreach’s own Fibre Community Partnership (FCP) scheme. The latter works with disadvantaged communities (e.g. rural villages) around England, Wales and Scotland to help co-fund related deployments.
Across Wales more than 50 communities, making up nearly 25,000 properties in some of the most rural parts of the country, could take advantage of this ultrafast upgrade as a result of the scheme. Just to put that in some context, more than 900,000 properties across Wales already have access to Full Fibre broadband via Openreach’s network and rising.
Suzanne Rutherford, Chief Engineer Director for Openreach (Wales), said:
“We’re delighted to announce Llanbrynmair as the first telephone exchange area in the UK to achieve 100% Full Fibre coverage.
This milestone is a significant achievement for us and reflects Openreach’s commitment to building our Full Fibre network as far and as fast as possible.
To reach every property within an exchange area with Full Fibre has never been done before so I’m proud that we managed to cross this engineering challenge in Wales first. Issues such as difficult topography, access to land or cost can all have an impact on how far we can go within a telephone exchange area but I’m delighted that these potential pitfalls have been crossed thanks to team work – from our local engineers, the community and UK Government.”
Sir Chris Bryant, UK Government Telecoms Minister, said:
“It is fantastic to see an entire community in Wales having access to top-of-the-range internet thanks to this government-backed programme.
A good internet connection is absolutely essential from easing day-to-day tasks such as online shopping and banking, to helping international musicians deliver showstopping performances, or enabling a farming business to branch out into other avenues.”
We should point out that other exchange areas are very close to the 100% figure, although in those cases there are often a few premises that still aren’t covered for various different reasons. Equally, the definition of an “exchange area” is somewhat specific to Openreach, while other altnets could perhaps claim to have already covered 100% of premises in various other communities.
Openreach’s full fibre broadband network currently covers nearly 16 million UK premises, and they’re investing up to £15bn to hit 25m by December 2026 (here), before reaching up to 30 million by 2030.