Broadband: Wales

(asked on 11th February 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, how much funding he plans to allocate to Wales under the UK Rural Gigabit Connectivity Programme.


Answered by
Matt Warman Portrait
Matt Warman
This question was answered on 1st March 2021

The UK Rural Gigabit Connectivity (RGC) programme launched in May 2019, with voucher and public sector site elements.

Through RGC, the UK government has continued the roll-out of gigabit capable full-fibre in Wales, with nearly £3.7m committed:

a) 351 connected (£646k) and 932 pipeline (£1.79m) rural vouchers

b) £1.25m to for 103 public sites in 11 Local Authority areas - Welsh Government will oversee the project that covers public sites in Anglesey, Carmarthenshire, Ceredigion, Conwy, Denbighshire, Flintshire, Gwynedd, Neath Port Talbot, Pembrokeshire, Powys, and Swansea.

In addition to rural vouchers, in Wales there was the previous gigabit voucher scheme with 562 connected (£1.24m) and 66 pipeline (£147k).

In addition to the RGC public site project, in Wales there are a number of other Local Full Fibre Network Challenge Fund projects that are connecting public sites with nearly £24.5m committed:

  • across North Wales with the six local authorities for 350 public sites

  • in Pembrokeshire for 70 public sites

  • along the South Wales Strategic Road Network

  • across the Cardiff Capital Region with the ten local authorities for 174 public sites

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