Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 6:17 pm on 15 May 2018.
I'd just like to point out I'm not the First Minister. I do sometimes stand in for the First Minister, but on this occasion I'm just being myself. [Interruption.] No worries. It was just causing other Members to grin, I think.
So, a number of issues there. The way that the original scheme worked was that we didn't specify any premises at all and BT just had all the premises in Wales to chose from and obviously they went to the ones that were the cheapest and the fastest and the closest together because that's their best commercial advantage. However, I just want to put to bed once and for all the myth that this is not a rural scheme. This is a market intervention: we are not allowed to go with it where any commercial operator goes and therefore there is no Superfast Cymru in any city or conurbation or large development because obviously that's where the commercial roll-out has happened. So, in my own constituency there's no Superfast Cymru, and I can assure you I have people who haven't got broadband, but I'm not able to go there and intervene on their behalf, which is a frustration.
But we have learnt from some of the issues that we had around comms, as I've said in response to a number of Members around the Chamber. In the new schemes that we're putting out, once the proposals come back, we have asked for specific premises. So, the new procurements will be on the basis of specific premises and specific costs and we will be able to tell people immediately whether they're in or out, and the ones who are out, we'll be able to work with proactively to get them involved in the community schemes and the voucher schemes, and the ones who are in, we'll be able to keep them informed on a personal basis about where they are and any engineering problems et cetera, et cetera that arise. So, we've learnt the lesson of the comms and I like to think that, going forward, we won't have that problem.
We do know within most parameters who is connected and there is an interactive map on the Welsh Government site that tells you if you're a white premises or not. There are small tweaks with that, as I said. As I go around the country, we've found some issues with it, but they're very small. So, by and large, the map is accurate. I would urge Members who do find an inaccuracy on the map to tell me about it because we are working very hard to make sure that that's as accurate as it's possible to make it.
We did include nearly 2,000 additional business premises through the Airband contract as well, so that's an additional contract we've put in specifically to cover off business premises, because in the initial open market review, a lot of business premises were covered by the commercial companies and then it became increasingly obvious that they weren't going to be covered. So, we did put an additional contract in for that specifically, and that contract is now complete and running.
Lastly, in terms of the shared infrastructure and mobile masts, as I said in response to Russell George, my frustration is that it seems obvious to me that we are not going to have a full commercial market in rural parts of Wales. We'll be lucky if we get a single operator. So, the idea that we don't allow roaming, never mind shared infrastructure, is a matter of huge frustration to me. I just don't see how you can run a tourist business by saying, 'Come to Wales, as long as you're connected to this one operator.' I mean, clearly, that doesn't work. If you have a continental SIM—if you're lucky enough to have one of those—it happily roams around and finds you the operator, so I continue to press Ofcom and the UK Government very forcibly to allow that in rural and very rural parts, where there clearly isn't competition for those services.