Half of all Welsh properties can now access ultrafast, ultra-reliable broadband thanks to Openreach’s investment in a new, full fibre digital network.
Wales’ largest network provider has also revealed the top 20 locations across the country1 with the best ultrafast broadband coverage – and a Flintshire town has come out on top.
More than 816,000 homes and businesses can now access ultrafast, full fibre broadband via a range of retail providers using the company’s network. And, while cities and urban parts of south Wales are often perceived to have the best broadband, small towns and villages in north Wales dominate Openreach’s list of hotspots with the highest levels of full fibre.
Buckley in Flintshire has the highest coverage in Wales with more than nine out of every 10 properties able to upgrade to ultrafast broadband today. And across the county border in Conwy, the village of Old Colwyn has the second best coverage in Wales, with the village of Llangennech near Llanelli flying the flag for south Wales in third spot.
Among the top 20 are Penygroes and Blaenau Ffestiniog in Gwynedd, Burry Port in Carmarthenshire and Cross Keys in Caerphilly.
Openreach has invested more than £240 million2 in Wales’ new network with 277,000 households and businesses having upgraded to the faster, ultra-reliable services already.
Kim Mears, Chair of the Openreach Wales Board, said:
“This is tremendous news for Wales.”
“Having fast reliable connectivity that will be fit for the future is a huge game-changer in terms of how families live their lives, how our children learn and how our businesses prosper
“As one of the largest employers in Wales our engineers are building our full fibre network in communities where we ourselves live and work so to think that half of Wales can now access ultrafast broadband thanks to Openreach’s full fibre network naturally gives us all a feeling of great pride.
“It’s brilliant to reach 50% coverage across Wales, and a huge thank you must go to our hard working engineers and build partners who’ve helped make it happen. But we’re not stopping there…”
Work is continuing on the ground in places like St Asaph, Ebbw Vale and Tenby as well as Cardiff, Swansea, Newport and other town and villages up and down the country.
People can visit openreach.co.uk/ultrafastfullfibre to register for updates and check their postcode to see if and when services are available from their chosen provider.
It was recently announced that 44,000 homes and businesses across some of the harder to reach areas of Wales are benefiting from improved connectivity thanks to a successful partnership between Openreach and the Welsh Government.
The Secretary of State for Wales, David TC Davies said:
“This is an important milestone in the drive to ensure more homes and businesses across Wales benefit from full fibre broadband, improving vital connectivity.
“Alongside Openreach’s commercial build we’re delighted to be working with them to bring their future-proofed digital infrastructure to some of the harder to reach parts of Wales through our popular Gigabit Voucher scheme.
The Openreach network offers the widest choice of providers, such as BT, Sky, TalkTalk, Vodafone and Zen, which means people have lots of choice and can shop for the best deals.
You can find out more about the benefits of an upgrade to Full Fibre broadband on the Openreach website.
