5. Will the Cabinet Secretary make a statement on superfast broadband provision in Mid and West Wales? OAQ(5)0164(EI)

To date, the Superfast Cymru project has invested over £48.6 million in providing 171,498 homes and businesses in Mid and West Wales with access to superfast broadband connectivity, delivering average speeds of over 73 Mbps.

I thank the Minister for that and I acknowledge the role that she’s played in rolling out this programme and improving the accessibility to broadband throughout Mid and West Wales, but she will be aware that we’ve still got quite a way to go. I spend quite a lot of time in the car traversing the region and we go in and out of signal so it’s very, very difficult to do any business by e-mail for any great length of time, and I still have constituents who complain that they’re being messed about by the providers who are installing the service—like one from Llansadwrn in Carmarthenshire, who writes to say that he’s had his date of installation of superfast broadband revised back. The first installation date was summer 2016, then revised to March 2017, then to July 2017. Another one, who says that it’s always ‘two months away’ whenever she’s given the date and then that’s revised to a further two months away. So, I wonder if the Minister can give any hope to my constituents who are writing to me in these terms that there will be some significant further improvement soon.

I acknowledge the issue around the moving timescales, which we’ve discussed many times in this Chamber, and we have worked very hard with BT to make them give much more realistic time frames. Sometimes, it’s just not possible for them to understand what the engineering difficulties might be on the ground, but we have a very regular meeting with them where I go through evidence provided by Assembly Members such as yourself, to say, ‘Can we improve this communication system?’ Whilst it’s very frustrating for those individuals who are still in that situation, the incidence has dropped off very significantly since we’ve been working very hard to do that, though I acknowledge the frustration for those who are caught in that.

We have done extremely well in terms of coverage. At the moment, we’ve got 80 per cent completion in Pembrokeshire, 75 per cent completion in Carmarthenshire, 63 per cent completion in Ceredigion, and Powys is over 71 per cent complete. Those figures will improve as we go towards the end of the project. So, just to reiterate, the Superfast Cymru project will end in June. All the work that will be done under the project must have commenced by June—it will be complete by December.

Very shortly, in June, I will be making some announcements about the future programme to get to the remaining numbers of people. We are looking at an enormous number of innovative ways of getting the last few per cent up into superfast speeds. We’ll be investing in excess of £80 million in doing that. That’s dependent on what the clawback is on the current contract. So, as usual, I encourage all AMs to make sure that, where superfast is available, people are buying the service, because, obviously, for everything over 21 per cent take-up we get a gain share for that and that enables us to invest that money further in improvement.

You did also mention mobile phone connectivity. It’s true that the technologies are merging to the point where they appear to be one and the same thing, but unfortunately they are not. We don’t have mobile phone technology devolved in Wales—I wish we did—but we are working very hard with the mobile phone operators on a series of measures that will help improve connectivity, and I will also be making a statement about the number of roundtables we’re having on improving that connectivity. We are acutely aware of it.

The last thing to say on this is that we will be looking to see what we can do about the roll-out of fifth generation, so that people don’t have to climb up the steps—they can leap from where they are now up into the best possible provision. That’s an ongoing conversation with all of the mobile phone operators as well.

Minister, I’ve got two letters from you here, one dated March and one dated April. The one in March says that officials have spoken with BT colleagues who have confirmed the roll-out of superfast broadband will take place in June, but then a month later, on the very same property, you write again to me saying, since the update, information has now changed and it’s no longer available and unfortunately this particular property is going to be too far from the Cabinet. Now, the issue here, of course, I hope you will agree, is completely unacceptable because this particular property in this area had an opportunity to take part in another technology solution, and on your advice in March they turned the other solution down and said, ‘No, that’s fine, because we’ve got superfast broadband coming in June—we don’t need it, sorry’, and then only a month later to get yours—. Then it was too late, of course, to take part in the other technology solution. Do you agree that this is absolutely unacceptable? What are you going to do to make sure people get accurate information in the first place?

Yes, I accept the frustration of that. The letters do also say, of course, that dates are always subject to change, depending on engineering works and so on. We do try to give the most accurate information, and I absolutely acknowledge the frustration for those caught in a situation that changes in that way. So, we work very hard to make sure that information is accurate and the number of instances has declined very seriously, but I absolutely acknowledge the frustration of people who are caught up in that, and I’m very happy to work with you on an individual basis to make sure that those individuals do get the best solution.