Broadband: Gwynedd village faces wait as fibre scheme halted

Brithdir is not the place to live if you like binge-watching boxsets

Despite "appalling" broadband speeds, people living in one rural village face more buffering as a scheme to connect them to fibre broadband is on hold.

Residents of Brithdir, near Dolgellau in Gwynedd, said download speeds were 1-3 megabits per second (Mbps) - among the slowest in the UK.

Despite this, Openreach has paused its rural fibre broadband connection scheme, citing high demand.

MP Liz Saville Roberts said this worsened the "digital divide" in Wales.

According to Ofcom's latest internet speeds report, the average home broadband download speed in the UK in March 2021 was 79.1Mbps.

But with speeds as slow as 1Mbps in the village, downloading a non-HD two-hour film could take more than 70 minutes and anyone wanting to watch their favourite blockbuster in full HD would need to wait the better part of 17 hours.

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Resident Stuart Marsh called the situation "appalling".

He added: "The download speed is between one and three (Mbps) if we're lucky and upload is 0.5."

Stuart Marsh said villagers were frustrated at the "appalling" connectivity

He said people were unable to work from home and struggled to keep in touch with friends and relatives.

"Some of the rules with Covid are relaxing but there are still people that rely on broadband to communicate with their families.

"There's new people moving into the village who want to work from home and the current infrastructure doesn't allow that."

More than 80 households signed up to the Openreach's Fibre Community Partnership and people in the village said they were told Welsh government funding was available before Christmas.

"The residents are all frustrated," said Mr Marsh.

"It's not the first time that things look like they're moving forward and we have the government funding in place - but then everything comes to a grinding half, without any answers from BT."

Broadband network provider Openreach said it was working to build an "ultrafast ultra-reliable" full fibre network across Wales.

However, a spokesman added: "Our fibre community partnership has been an incredibly popular scheme and due to high levels of demand, we had to temporarily pause new registrations while we worked through existing requests."

Keeping in touch with friends or family online is "problematic" in Brithdir

Richard Feasey from the National Infrastructure Commissioner for Wales said the Welsh economy could be "left behind" if rolling out fibre broadband and better mobile services was not made easier.

Ms Saville Roberts, MP for Dwyfor Meirionnydd, has urged Openreach to resume the scheme as soon as possible.

"This move will understandably disappoint many communities, such as residents in Brithdir, who were led to believe that their scheme was progressing.

"People living in rural areas such as parts of Dwyfor Meirionnydd are already at a disproportionate disadvantage when it comes to accessing fast, reliable broadband.

"Delays to a specific scheme which aims to connect those who do not commercially or governmentally qualify for fibre broadband only serves to compound matters, further aggravating the digital divide between rural and urban areas."

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