7. 7. Statement: Update on Superfast Broadband

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:58 pm on 13 June 2017.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 5:58, 13 June 2017

I completely accept the point the Member is making about how essential the services are. If the Member has specific instances with BT where they are making excuses, as he puts it, which have been proven not to be the case, I would be most interested to know the details. I am aware of specific instances of landowners being very difficult, actually, but it is always interesting to understand the local picture.

In terms of the voucher scheme, we’ve already adjusted the voucher schemes once, so you can already apply for a voucher if you can get a step change if you’ve already got 2 Mbps and so on. We will be looking at that again. I apologise profusely for my various problems, but I’m due to come and visit your constituency, so I’d be very glad to have a really good chat with you about exactly what it is. That’s exactly what we’re looking for for the second project—to look at specific problems that we might be able to solve in a particular way. The voucher system can be adapted to suit whatever it is, or indeed we can adapt a lot of this new contract to do that. There are a number of different ways that we can do it. The voucher scheme is there to assist people who want to go faster than the project and to get to the people whom it is just never going to be economic to get to. But I don’t think you’re talking about very many of those. So, we can have a good conversation about how to lot the next contract, which might be very specific to those.

In terms of the premises, I think I've already said that, and if you look at the interactive map, you'll see what I mean. First of all, we've had a lot of new build and other premises over the time. There's no doubt at all that GIS mapping systems have improved immeasurably since 2011—so, we've just got better maps of it. But there's also no doubt at all that some of the premises on there are not premises that you'd want to broadband enable, and I don't know what the difference is. As I said anecdotally, I've looked at my own patch, and there are quite clearly some anomalies. There will be others. There may be premises that are missing that should be on there but aren't on there. So, we are very reliant on the information back. It will only be as good as the information we get back. So, we’re relying on the GIS system at the moment, and that's not absolutely perfect. But there's no doubt at all that it's much better than it was in 2011, which does account for some of the difference. So, the new build, the difference in mapping techniques, and the fact that we've gone down to premises level, and not postcode level, is making the difference, really, on that.

And I think, in terms of the infrastructure bit—I know the Llywydd just said broadband questions—the difficulty is that it's starting to get very difficult to distinguish between telecoms and broadband, and, as the Gs go up, then obviously a lot of people access broadband via mobile phone. But I'm not talking about masts here; I'm talking about digging a cable under the ground, and that's different. It's not just the permitted—. You have to have a wayleave and you have to have permission to maintain it and so on. But we are talking with planning colleagues about changes. I've had a mobile phone forum to discuss exactly this, and we'll be announcing a mobile phone plan very soon. It's beginning to be impossible to discuss the two separately, even though mobile is not devolved. So, you know, there are some complications there, but we are in the process of having exactly those discussions about planning. And, as I’ve said in this Chamber before, that will be a balance between getting the service to people and not covering our very beautiful countryside with a mast every 50 feet, which nobody wants.