Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:10 pm on 11 October 2016.
My understanding, Minister, is that this wasn’t exclusively a contract to connect rural communities, because I do recall that the Penylan notspot in my constituency was one of the early wins of this contract. As they no longer bother me about this issue, I can rather assume that they’re now very happy bunnies.
But I recently visited, with the Climate Change and Rural Affairs Committee, Ceredigion—in the last two weeks—and there farmers were very concerned that they had almost no connectivity at all, which, for rural communities, is a massive problem. How they are expected to run their business and submit their basic payment proposals online when they don’t actually have any connection in their homes is obviously a major issue for their businesses, particularly when new technology is increasingly being used to enable farmers to be more efficient. For example, in New Zealand I understand they’re using pasture meter sensor technology to examine every blade of grass on people’s land to ensure the right piece of grass to be directing their animals to. So, we are clearly going to need that sort of technology in the future here in Wales, with all the challenges posed by Brexit.
So, I’m a bit unclear as to why the fact that wireless technology is not devolved in some way prevents us insisting with BT that, in this second contract, they use the wireless connections they now have, since they took over EE, because it’s perfectly clear that it’s going to be almost impossible to connect every single remote farm in every part of wales, or it’s going to be hugely expensive. Surely, wireless technology is going to a much more efficient way of doing it. But technology has moved on so much in the last five years, since you signed the contract with BT, that it seems that we’re in danger of missing a trick. You didn’t mention in your statement that Airband community internet is providing wireless solutions for around 2,000 business premises. Why is it therefore not possible to insist with BT that they use wireless solutions to connect the more remote communities? That would enable them to get much more quickly connected, and clearly they are not going to be able to run these rural businesses in the future unless they are connected. So, I’d be grateful for some guidance on that.