Llanbrynmair becomes first village to reach 100% full fibre

Openreach has announced its first 100% full fibre telephone exchange, located in the rural village of Llanbrynmair, in Powys, Wales.

It's the very first exchange area in the UK where every home and property can now access 1Gbps full fibre broadband.

The rollout was funded by the Government's Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme, where residents can pool vouchers together to connect underserved areas.

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Llanbrynmair full fibre broadband

More than 500 homes in the rural village of Llanbrynmair in Powys, Wales, can now access full fibre to the home broadband with average download speeds up to 1Gbps.

The rollout, by BT Group-owned Openreach, has marked their first telephone exchange in the UK, where every property can access full fibre broadband.

One of the residents of Llanbrynmair, Aled Wyn Davies, said, "Having ultrafast broadband has completely changed our lives.

"I can record myself singing and send it to an accompanist or studio and they receive everything instantaneously. Previously it would have taken 10 minutes or more and I would have to go outside the house to find a mobile signal. Everything's instant now and so much easier.

"Everybody in the house is happy. We can use our different gadgets at the same time and I can watch the football and there's no buffering at all. It's perfect."

Residents of Llanbrynmair will now be able to order ultrafast and even gigabit broadband from any one of Openreach's retail providers, including BT, Sky, TalkTalk, Plusnet, Vodafone, and NOW Broadband, with prices from as little as £22 per month.

This is perhaps one of the major benefits of Openreach over other independent full fibre networks, as customers have multiple providers competing on price, and that can be switched to at the end of a contract, without needing new cables and hardware installed at their property.

Llanbrynmair has no other full fibre networks available in the village, so they'll no doubt be benefiting from the faster speeds of Openreach's rollout.

Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme

Many underserved rural areas like Llanbrynmair are overlooked by commercial full fibre rollouts, and as such, rely on either funding via Project Gigabit, or resident-led approaches through the Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme.

Much like Project Gigabit, the Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme is funded by the UK Government, yet, individual properties can request a voucher to cover the cost of installing full fibre broadband at their home.

When multiple residents apply for these vouchers, the funding becomes available for full fibre networks to start building and connecting new areas.

The scheme also isn't limited to Openreach, although with nationwide availability, residents may have more luck with them, but the Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme can also be used with many other fibre networks, especially if they are already active nearby a particular area.

Across Wales there are more than 50 small towns and villages, covering some 25,000 rural homes that could benefit from the scheme's ability to bring them full fibre broadband.

The caveats are that enough people in a particular area need to sign up to raise the funding required, with one voucher awarded per property that applies. In addition, households need to commit to signing up to a broadband deal with that network for at least 12 months once they're connected.

Suzanne Rutherford, Chief Engineer Director for Openreach in Wales, said, "We're delighted to announce Llanbrynmair as the first telephone exchange area in the UK to achieve 100% Full Fibre coverage.

"This milestone is a significant achievement for us and reflects Openreach's commitment to building our Full Fibre network as far and as fast as possible.

"To reach every property within an exchange area with Full Fibre has never been done before so I'm proud that we managed to cross this engineering challenge in Wales first. Issues such as difficult topography, access to land or cost can all have an impact on how far we can go within a telephone exchange area but I'm delighted that these potential pitfalls have been crossed thanks to team work - from our local engineers, the community and UK Government."

Find out more about grants for rural broadband in our main guide.