Full fibre: how every south west Wales county scores

Nine in ten Swansea premises can now get full fibre broadband, putting the city above the Welsh average, according to new figures published by the Swansea Bay City Deal.

The numbers, drawn from thinkbroadband data for June, put Swansea at 90% full fibre coverage against a Welsh average of 87%, with Neath Port Talbot at 87%, Carmarthenshire at 78% and Pembrokeshire at 77%.

Two years ago the picture was very different. In 2024, coverage across the four counties ranged from around 50% to just over 60%, the City Deal says.

The biggest jump has come in Neath Port Talbot, where coverage has risen by more than 30 percentage points.

Full fibre, or fibre to the premises, runs the cable all the way to the building rather than stopping at a street cabinet, supporting the fastest and most reliable home connections.

Not everyone is sharing in it yet. The City Deal acknowledges that while far fewer premises are stuck below 10 Mbps than before, more work is needed for those still on poor connections.

Three schemes are aimed at that tail: the Better Broadband Infill Project and the Welsh Government’s £70m Extending High Speed Broadband Project both target premises below 30 Mbps, while the UK Government’s Project Gigabit focuses on rural and hard-to-reach areas.

Mobile coverage tells a similar story, on the City Deal’s reading of Ofcom’s spring Connected Nations report: 4G is available from at least one network at 98 to 99% of premises across the region, with the Shared Rural Network cutting the number of places with no signal at all.

The urban-rural divide has not closed, though. The region’s two most rural counties still sit around ten points behind Swansea on full fibre, even after the recent gains.

Jonathan Burnes, the City Deal’s portfolio director, said the scale of improvement was “remarkable”, with connectivity improving “including in many rural communities that have traditionally been harder to reach”.

He credited the region’s partnership approach: “By bringing together local authorities, the Regional Digital Infrastructure Team, telecommunications providers and both Welsh and UK Governments, we have been able to attract investment, address gaps in coverage and deliver the digital infrastructure needed to support communities, businesses and public services.”

“While there is still more to do, particularly in some of our most rural areas, these results demonstrate the real difference that collaborative working can achieve,” he said.

The figures land days after the latest piece of the region’s digital rewiring switched on, with new mobile equipment at Swansea’s hospitals and university campuses, part-funded through the City Deal’s £25m digital infrastructure programme.

Anyone wanting details on connectivity in their own area can contact their council’s digital champion through the City Deal.