The broadband market in Wales has seen rapid change over the last five years. Ninety-two per cent of premises in Wales can now access a superfast broadband service, compared to barely half five years ago. This transformation has been brought about by both private and public sector investment.

The private sector continues to invest in broadband services in Wales. Virgin Media are continuing to expand their footprint in south Wales and have expanded into the Wrexham area. Openreach has announced they intend to bring full fibre connectivity to 3 million premises across eight UK cities, including Cardiff, by 2020.

From the public sector perspective, Superfast Cymru has made a massive contribution by providing access to nearly 733,000 premises. It is not an understatement to say that Superfast Cymru has played a significant part in revolutionising the digital landscape in Wales. Both businesses and individuals are now enjoying the benefits that fast broadband brings.

We are supporting businesses to make the most of their connectivity through our Superfast Business Wales programme. It supports businesses across the whole of Wales to understand, adopt and exploit the digital business technologies that superfast infrastructure makes available. So far, the programme has helped over 3,000 businesses, provided 20,000 hours of support and held 550 workshops and events. For individuals, broadband helps them to learn, to stay in touch, to find jobs and to access entertainment.

As I have outlined in previous statements, however, there is more to do to reach the remaining premises that are not yet to be able to benefit from fast broadband. Given the scale of the task in providing fast reliable broadband to these premises currently unable to access it, we are going to need a range of interventions in future. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. We need to make sure that these interventions are complementary, address the remaining need for fast broadband and reflect local demand for services. 

There are three elements to our approach: individual support through our Access Broadband Cymru and ultrafast connectivity voucher schemes; support for communities through our voucher schemes and community-led interventions; and publicly funded roll-outs through the successor project to Superfast Cymru. The successor project to Superfast Cymru will form one part of the suite of interventions. And as I outlined in my previous statements ahead of the summer recess, we have been undertaking a tender exercise for the successor project to Superfast Cymru. This has been a very complex process.

The procurement for lots one, north Wales, and three, south-west Wales and the Valleys, is now complete. The successful bidder for both lots is BT. A grant agreement was signed yesterday. Under the grant agreement, BT will initially provide access to fast broadband to nearly 16,000 premises across both lots by March 2021, utilising just over £13 million of public funding. This funding will be met from contributions from the Welsh Government and from EU funding. Work on providing the underlying network to support the project will begin shortly. This work is vital in providing the backbone to connect the premises. The first premises are forecast to be connected by the end of 2019. The vast majority of these premises will be served by a fibre-to-the-premises connection, including all premises in lot three. The evaluation of tenders for lot two covering east Wales is ongoing, and I will make a further announcement on this as soon as the process has been completed.

In my previous statements I also outlined our work to review the ultrafast connectivity voucher scheme in light of the announcement by the UK Government of their national gigabit voucher project. Officials are working with their counterparts in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport to explore how the schemes can be used to best effect to improve broadband connectivity for homes and businesses in Wales. They have explored a number of options and met again last week to finalise a proposal. I will provide you with a further update as soon as I am able.

I am committed to providing individual support to those premises unable to access fast broadband by continuing the Access Broadband Cymru scheme. We are working to streamline the application process to make it quicker and easier for individuals to apply to the scheme. For many, a community-based scheme is going to be the best route to fast broadband connectivity. As Members will be aware, we have already had successes in supporting community level interventions.

Villagers in Michaelston-y-Fedw used vouchers from our Access Broadband Cymru scheme to support their own community broadband initiative. They formed a community interest company to bring ultrafast fibre-to-the-premises broadband to residents and businesses. This has increased their broadband speeds from around 4 Mbps up to upload and download speeds of 1 Gbps. The community project employed contractors to do some of the work, while teams of volunteers have taken part in activities such as digging chambers, fibre splicing, laying out ducts and fitting out the village's communications hub. The village pub, community hall and church are already connected to the ultrafast broadband network, and work is under way to connect over 175 premises in total in the community. More premises are now choosing to join the project. 

This self-dig approach isn’t the only community model and we will work with communities and local authorities to provide advice and funding to bring fast broadband where it is needed. For example, officials have met with representatives from the B4RN project in north-west England to discuss how they could support communities in north Wales. Michaelston-y-Fedw is not the only community that is exploring community solutions. I attended a public meeting in Llanddewi Rhydderch in Monmouthshire recently and that community is also considering a scheme. Our officials are now working with them to explore the options available.

As I have highlighted in previous statements, we are developing a community intervention that will build on the ABC and ultrafast vouchers to make accessing funding for these types of schemes more straightforward. This work is dependent on the outcome of the tender exercise for the successor project to Superfast Cymru and, as outlined above, the review of the voucher schemes. As these other pieces of work come to an end, officials will be able to turn their attention to further developing the new scheme. In the meantime, communities will still be able to access funding from the voucher schemes.

Our work to improve digital infrastructure is vital to underpin our commitments in 'Taking Wales Forward' and to the economic action plan. I will continue to keep you informed as we develop and deliver our integrated approach to fast broadband connectivity. Diolch.