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<h1 class='heading'>Getting up to speed: Wales’ road to broadband</h1>
<h3 class='names'>The region went from the slowest in the UK to having the most fibre coverage, but it may take more than just fibre to keep up</h3>
<h4>May 2021</h4>
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<p>With broadband, Wales has had a hard time getting up to speed. On average, Welsh broadband runs slower than in the UK as a whole. At 57.5 megabits per second (Mbps), loading a one-hour Netflix show can take almost seven minutes, compared to the five and a half minutes that it takes in the whole of the UK where<a href="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.ofcom.org.uk/research-and-data/telecoms-research/broadband-research/may-2020-uk-home-broadband-performance&sa=D&source=editors&ust=1621795134104000&usg=AOvVaw187LDeE9mXQ2zNArdCgRsq"> the average speed rises to 71 Mbps,</a> according to Ofcom.</p>
<p>Yet, most EU countries have faster broadband than the UK. Only six of the 27 EU states are slower and, among G7 countries, the UK is second to last.</p>
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<p>Wales’ performance on both rankings would be even poorer but this doesn’t reflect all the nuances of internet connection in the country. Some regions are connected through the fastest technologies available, while others can barely open Google. So, what makes broadband in Wales so erratic?</p>
<h4>An Old Problem</h4>
<p>Broadband connection is far from a universal experience in Wales. Users in the Cardiff area will get different speeds from those in Llandudno because of location, available infrastructure, and market incentives.</p>
<p>Old, dial-up internet used to be delivered over the same copper wires as telephone lines and these were repurposed in the early stages of broadband. However, copper’s main problem is the distance between the premises and the street cabinet that contains the main wires. The longer the wire, the slower the connection.</p>
<p>Newer fibre-optic cables don’t have this issue, but they are more expensive to install, so they are sometimes used as far as the cabinet, with slower cheaper copper carrying the connection the rest of the way to the premises. So, the distance problem remains and it <a href="analysis.html">mostly affects the rural areas of Wales</a> where buildings are scattered sparsely and the landscape can be problematic.</p>
<p>The number of people connected also affects this solution. Ben Lake, MP for Ceredigion in the UK Parliament says the higher take up during the pandemic has revealed a problem with the fibre to the cabinet approach: “I fear we'll find that, as more people use and demand the service, the volatility of the actual speeds they receive is going to worsen,” he said.</p>
<p>The solution ultimately is to install fibre connections that go all the way to the premises. This, however, is the most expensive option and internet service providers are not willing to invest in infrastructure for small villages in remote areas.</p>
<p>Richard Feasey is on the National Infrastructure Commission for Wales, a committee that advises the government on the country’s infrastructure, digital included, for the coming decades. He explains that “A company like BT will tend to allocate their money to where they have most competitive pressure and they tend to leave the other parts of the country until last because there's not a cost for them to do that.”</p>
<p>Wales happens to be one of those places, he says. “The amount of competition to BT, and between the providers of these services in Wales, is typically less than in other parts of the UK.”</p>
<p>Wales’ internet lag is nothing new. A decade ago, the country had the slowest broadband speed, the lowest broadband take up, and the lowest availability of superfast broadband (connections of 30 Mbps and over, <a href="https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20200803095351/https://www.ofcom.org.uk/research-and-data/multi-sector-research/infrastructure-research#accordion__target-93297">according to Ofcom</a>) among the UK’s four regions, putting the country on the brink of digital exclusion.</p>
<p class='para'>But a ten-year EU plan poured money into raising internet speeds across Europe and the UK and Welsh governments matched the funding. The lack of competition between providers in Wales meant that commercial investment wasn’t going to solve the problem. Publicly funded, Superfast Cymru flipped the switch on Wales. </p>
<p>The programme connected 733,000 premises to speeds of <a href="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN06643/SN06643.pdf&sa=D&source=editors&ust=1621795754198000&usg=AOvVaw3hUFWUl-btYpGqaMqonCVb">24 Mbps and above</a>, and by 2020 93% of Wales’ territory had superfast broadband coverage by government standards. Now, one in five premises in Wales is fully connected to fibre, which is slightly higher than the UK as a whole. This happened because it was impossible to connect some areas with other technologies.</p>
<p>Even after all this progress, some parts of Wales remain completely unconnected or rely on extremely slow connections (under 10 Mbps). The Welsh government has announced a second phase of its superfast broadband programme and <a href="https://gov.wales/national-infrastructure-commission-wales-annual-report-2020">hopes to connect 39,000 more premises using full-fibre by June 2022.</a> Despite this, the National Infrastructure Commission estimates that between 50,000 and 80,000 households could remain without <a href="https://gov.wales/national-infrastructure-commission-wales-annual-report-2020">“reasonable broadband services.”</a></p>
<p>While some areas in Wales are still waiting to be connected, BT has vowed to bring full-fibre broadband connections to <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-57091063">25 million households in the UK by 2026</a>, which could reach up to 900 Mbps, according to BT’s website. Some argue that rather than focusing on next-generation technology for already connected areas, the priority should be to flip the switch on the regions that are isolated.</p>
<p>For the National Infrastructure Commission, fibre is not the immediate solution, at least not in Wales. “You don't get very much fibre for your money. And it takes a long time for the fibre to arrive,” said Richard Feasey. He explains that mobile rollout can be more effective, allowing more people to connect to the internet more quickly and at a lower price: “We need to be clever in the way we use public money and being clever means not just building fibre.”</p>
<p>It’s taken Wales a decade to catch up on broadband. There’s been good progress and now, with several schemes ongoing, both regionally and nationally, a future where the whole country is connected might be in sight. But as the UK starts a new race towards next-generation broadband, Wales may struggle to keep up. It seems like the road to broadband will be a marathon, not a sprint. </p>
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