Village first in UK to have access to superfast broadband

A rural village in mid Wales has become the first area in the UK where every resident has access to ultrafast broadband.

Llanbrynmair, in Powys, is the first telephone exchange area to be upgraded so that full fibre broadband is possible in 100% of homes and properties.

Full fibre is when a fibre optic cable is used to provide broadband directly into homes and businesses – it has a larger bandwidth than traditional broadband and the line is not shared with anyone else, leading to faster speeds.

Aled Wyn Davies, of the group Three Welsh Tenors, lives four miles (6.4km) outside of the village and said it was “life-changing” for residents.

“We barely had any internet here at all,” he said.

“It took 10 minutes to load one page.”

The singer added “friends from all over the world” could now be contacted.

“Before it would have been faster to send a postcard,” he said.

“Hopefully it will arrive in every community soon as it’s well worth the wait.”

Llanbrynmair is one of the biggest parishes in Wales, spanning nearly 20 miles (32km) from one end to the other.

About 600 properties will now be able to access internet speeds of up to one gigabit per second, with landowner permissions having to be secured to enable it to happen and more than 60km (37 miles) of cables erected.

Tegryd Rees, an engineer for Openreach, was part of the team to perform the upgrades and said it was a “huge achievement”.

“We are talking about 60km of overhead cables, over 1,000 poles to hold those cables. Tree cutting, lines crossing different boundaries to different land owners,” he said.

“There were lots of challenges.”

Openreach, the BT-owned operator of Britain’s biggest broadband network, say this “ground-breaking upgrade” has been made possible through the UK government’s Project Gigabit voucher scheme.

The £5 billion programme targets hard-to-reach areas where it is more difficult and more expensive to build digital infrastructure.

Eligible homes and businesses can apply for up to £4,500 to cover the costs of an upgraded connection.

A total of 970,000 properties across Wales have access to a similarly-fast service, although coverage is still patchy.

Sixty miles from Llanbrynmair, residents of Llanrheadr-ym-Mochnant are waiting for improvements.

Meirion Edwards, a farmer in the area, said they had “given up trying” with their poor internet connection.

“Between 0.4 and one megabits is the speed we get”, he said.

“It’s very slow. It takes a long time to load even one page.

“The farm work is difficult. We can’t load any interactive maps here, so we have to travel to our daughter’s house in the next village. It’s inconvenient.”

Suzanne Rutherford, a chief engineer for Openreach in Wales, said what had been achieved in Llanbrynmair had “never been done before”.

I’m proud that we managed to cross this engineering challenge in Wales first,” she said.

“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.”