6. 5. Statement: Superfast Broadband — The Next Steps

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:31 pm on 8 November 2016.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 4:31, 8 November 2016

Thank you for those questions. Russell George didn’t mention the fact that in committee last Thursday morning, he pressed me as to when my next statement would be, and I promised him it would be before Christmas. So, I was rather hoping you’d give me credit for having got there really quite rapidly, only two days later.

In terms of the take-up, we have independent research to show us what is possible and ambitious. And with all new technologies, there’s a standard curve that these things take, so around 29 per cent at this point in time is about what you’d expect, and then that accelerates as technology beds in. Our independent research shows us that somewhere between 35 and 50 per cent is a realistic estimate of what we might expect. Obviously, we have a marketing campaign and we have a business take-up campaign. These complement, obviously, all the private campaigns undertaken by all the internet service providers—we’re all bombarded with them every day. They’re in addition to that. So, I think you’d be hard put to say that people weren’t aware of broadband. And Russell George will also be aware that we’re being a little bit sensitive in some areas of Wales, because we don’t want to be pushing the expectations of people who don’t yet have broadband.

So, what I would urge Members to do is to play their part right across Wales, as I said in the debate only last week, in encouraging take-up with their constituents who do have broadband, and encouraging constituents who are, very understandably, frustrated at not having broadband, to encourage their neighbours who do have it to take it up because, obviously, the gainshare increases for all of the percentages of that that we get. And so, it’s a very positive message that if you can persuade your neighbours who have it to use it, then the Welsh Government will have more money to make sure that we can get it to other people.

As the campaign spreads out across Wales, as I said last week, we will share with Members where it is in their particular area, their constituency or their region, and we do hope that Members will get on board with helping us with that marketing, as, obviously, the more money we’re getting, the better. If we were to reach 80 per cent then that would be marvellous, because we’d have that much more money to get the fibre broadband or any other technology out to people.

And on that point, the point is, of course, that for some of the hardest premises to reach in Wales, it will not be fibre broadband in the sense of a cable to your house. But the technology moves apace, and so we will get very fast broadband to people; it might be microwave or satellite technology. On that basis, I’m not saying that we will let a single monolithic contract to match up to the end of the Superfast Cymru project; it may be that we let individual contracts in different areas, so that SMEs and other technology providers can take part in that procurement, and we’d be very anxious to make sure that that could happen.