ABERYSTWYTH and Pwllheli could soon have some of the fastest internet speeds in Europe after a massive upgrade of the systems in over 40 towns was announced.

Openreach today (Wednesday) outlined plans to make ultra-reliable and gigabit-capable full fibre broadband available to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses in more than 45 market towns and villages across Wales, including Aberystwyth and Pwllheli.

The towns will be upgraded by Openreach, without taxpayer subsidy and it’s hoped having access to some of the fastest broadband speeds in Europe will boost their post-covid economic recovery.

The upgrade work will also benefit the surrounding areas of Pwllheli and Aberystwyth that currently access the exchange the main exchange for their internet.Work is expected to get underway in many of the announced locations within the next 12-18 months, although due to the size of the build, some places will see work continue into 2024.

The new Welsh locations are part of a wider announcement to make the new technology available to a further 3.2 million premises in the UK’s hardest to reach ‘final third’. i  

This follows the recent announcement that Welsh Government is to extend its BDUK contract with Openreach to build fibre broadband to those local authority areas with less than 90 per cent superfast broadband coverage.

The build is at the forefront of a massive £12 billion investment, which will see Openreach’s ambition to build ‘Full Fibre’ iv infrastructure to 20 million premises throughout the UK by the mid-to-late 2020s – delivering significant economic, social and environmental benefits for rural and urban communities, assuming the right regulatory and political fibre enablers are in place.

Connie Dixon, Openreach’s Partnership Director for Wales, said: “We’ve already upgraded tens of thousands of homes and business across Wales to full fibre.

As well as keeping the existing network running throughout the Covid crisis, our engineers have safely and with social distancing in place, continued building the new infrastructure to make sure that as lockdown restrictions ease, our network is there to support families, businesses and the economic recovery.

“I’d encourage everyone to check if they can switch to the new technology, and if you can, get in touch with your broadband provider to find out more about the many benefits. ‘Full fibre’ is more reliable and more resilient meaning fewer faults and more predictable, consistent speeds. It is also ‘future-proof’ to easily meet the growing data demands of future technologies.”

To view the full list of market towns and villages included in the announcement, please visit - https://www.openreach.com/fibre-broadband/.

People interested in seeing whether they can upgrade their broadband can see what’s available in their area by entering their postcode into our online fibre checker.