Members will be keen to understand how many premises in their constituencies and regions were connected through the Superfast Cymru project and how many premises were connected overall. I will release this information as soon as I have it. We are currently reviewing the latest data presented by Openreach and working through our robust testing and verification process. I aim to announce the final confirmed figures in the spring.

Despite the success of Superfast Cymru in transforming broadband connectivity across Wales, there is clearly more work to be done. My own postbag continues to swell with letters from individuals, communities and businesses frustrated by the absence of high-speed broadband where they live or work. This Government shares that frustration and is committed to taking further action to addressing those broadband issues.

We have identified 88,000 premises across Wales that will not be served over the next three years without Government intervention. A detailed map showing these premises is available on the website. As I outlined in my oral statement of 8 November 2016, we have committed £80 million to enable this work. It is important to recognise, however, that the work to be done will get progressively more difficult and a one-size-fits-all approach may not deliver the best outcome. So, today I am announcing a suite of measures and proposals that, when taken together, will help us to realise the ambition described in 'Taking Wales Forward' to bring people together digitally by offering fast, reliable broadband to every property in Wales.

Firstly, I'm pleased to announce that we have now invited suppliers to tender for the successor scheme to Superfast Cymru. We have invited the market to present solutions in three lots with an emphasis on rural delivery, business prioritisation and ultrafast 100 Mbps services. Superfast Cymru delivered access to vast numbers of premises in rural areas, but there is more work to be done in parts of Powys and Ceredigion in particular. To address this, we have encouraged solutions that connect premises in those areas and in areas with lower 4G mobile data coverage.  The tender assessment will also recognise those bidders that target premises suffering the lowest download speeds. Businesses are taking advantage of the opportunities that having a fast connection affords, but we recognise that there are areas that businesses could be better served. We have, therefore, encouraged bidders to pay particular attention to business premises in their responses to the invitation to tender.

The demand for connectivity and the speed of that connectivity continues to grow exponentially. In the home, for example, video streaming to 4K and now 8K televisions are putting ever greater pressure on bandwidth and we need to ensure that the infrastructure keeps up with this demand. We also need to ensure wherever possible that we minimise the need for future public intervention by encouraging sustainable solutions that are scalable in future without the need for additional public investment. We have, therefore, encouraged the market to focus on the delivery of ultrafast and gigabit connectivity in their responses to the invitation to tender. I know that uncertainty around which premises will be connected and time frames for connectivity caused some frustration during the delivery of Superfast Cymru. To help alleviate this, the successful bidder will be required to identify from the outset the specific premises that will be served in any given lot. Not only will this provide greater certainty for residents and businesses in the plan, it will also enable those premises not addressed to focus on alternative approaches.

I am acutely aware that slippage of delivery timescales dogged Superfast Cymru and was the source of endless frustration for those whose dates changed. While it is unlikely that project slippage can be entirely eradicated given the complexity of the engineering involved and the scale of the challenge, we will encourage suppliers to consider how delays will be minimised and premises will be notified when changes inevitably occur. I have to be clear, however, that the funding available is unlikely to deliver fast broadband to every premises that we have identified. The invitation to tender represents one part of a suite of interlinked interventions designed to improve connectivity. Our Access Broadband Cymru and ultrafast connectivity voucher schemes will continue to provide funding in parallel to this work. Both schemes are being reviewed to ensure that they continue to provide the right solutions and complement the new Superfast Cymru successor scheme and the wider broadband landscape.

We also plan to introduce an additional, novel scheme that supports communities demonstrating tangible demand, particularly targeting those communities that are not covered by suppliers in their response to the ITT. We are seeking to establish a broadband outreach team to support this approach and to work with clusters of homes or businesses to harness this demand, define a local project, and procure a solution. There is much work to be done on this approach, but I will provide more detail in due course.

Finally, concerns have been raised about those premises where the infrastructure required to connect them appears to have been deployed by Openreach, yet the work has not been completed. In such circumstances, Members can be assured that the Welsh Government has not funded any aspect of that infrastructure. We have invited Openreach to provide detail on these structures and we will explore how we can support their completion through the gainshare mechanism in the grant agreement so that as many premises as possible can be addressed. In addition to this, I have also agreed to a request from Openreach to extend the build phase of the Superfast Cymru project by two months so that the delayed works to around 2,500 premises can be completed and commissioned. This will not lead to any further costs to the Welsh Government.

While I firmly believe that the success of Superfast Cymru should not be underestimated, and while I encourage Members to consider not only the challenges within their constituencies but also the considerable achievements, I do recognise that we have much to do. Above all, we need to ensure that fast broadband is available to everyone so that Wales can to meet the ever-growing demand for greater bandwidth and increasing digitisation. Together, the successor scheme, the community scheme, and our voucher schemes will provide a comprehensive package of interventions that will help us meet the challenges ahead.