RESIDENTS of an Aberaeron hamlet are super-angry at their continuing wait for superfast broadband.

Bewildered villagers of Oakford say they have somehow been overlooked in the Superfast Cymru roll-out despite having been promised high-speed broadband three years ago.

Bob Turner, who has raised the matter with Ceredigion MP Ben Lake, described the situation as “insane” and suggested vast amounts of taxpayers’ money was being wasted.

“Two years ago a BT planner visited, surveyed, and designed a fibre distribution for the village,” he explained.

“About a year ago BT turned up and ran a couple of miles of overhead fibre to link the village with Llanarth cabinet 1 which was already enabled for high speed.

“They dug up the roads, installed ducts, erected new poles where the existing EL poles were inappropriate and took fibre to every distribution point in the village and immediate locality.

“The contract with BT for deployment finished at the end of 2017 and we are now being told that perhaps we will have better luck in the next contract later in 2018.

“Everyone in the village, and local area, can look out their windows and see the useless fibre strapped limply to a brand-new telegraph pole with no assurance that it will ever get lit up.

“The situation is that, for the last year, 95 per cent of the job has been complete, and only required ‘lighting up’.

“With the demise of the contract, we are now left hanging."

A spokesperson for Openreach said: “Since the start of the Superfast Cymru project it has always been made clear that some premises would not have access to superfast broadband through the project or commercial roll-outs. Also, due to the complex nature of the engineering project our plans have had to change from time to time.

“We appreciate the frustration of Derwen Gam residents who currently cannot access Fibre Broadband but the Welsh Government is already planning the next stage of extending the reach of fast, reliable broadband even further across Wales."

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