A rural Monmouthshire village has the opportunity to boost homes and businesses with ultrafast full fibre broadband.
Openreach has announced the latest set of rural Welsh locations that could soon become ultrafast with the support of UK Government broadband vouchers.
Tredunnock, near Usk, is among the list of communities set to benefit.
Local MP David Davies has joined up with Openreach engineers to help awareness of the scheme so residents can take advantage.
Mr Davies said: “I welcome the investment Openreach is making to our communities. This is something I pursued for a long time.
“Good connectivity is essential and full fibre broadband is revolutionising the way we all live and work. It was great to see first-hand the technology being used by Openreach across Monmouthshire.
“Residents in Tredunnock now have a golden opportunity to grasp this ultrafast opportunity by pledging their voucher and helping to ensure their community is not left behind.”
Funding through the UK Government’s Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme and the deployment of new broadband signal boosting technology means Tredunnock is within reach of an ultrafast upgrade.
If enough people sign up, residents can simply apply for and pool together their free vouchers to help fund the build – securing faster broadband speeds and greater reliability.
Martin Williams, partnership director for Openreach in Wales, said: “This is a really exciting opportunity for the people of Tredunnock to bring all the benefits of ultrafast, ultra-reliable full fibre broadband to their community.
“Our Fibre Community Partnership programme has meant we have been able to potentially bring hundreds more communities across the UK into our full fibre build plans. But building out the network to these harder to reach locations is still challenging, which is why it is only possible with everyone working together - you, your neighbours and Openreach.
“We are investing £15bn to build full fibre broadband to 25 million homes and more than six million of those will be in the toughest third of the UK. But we can’t upgrade the whole country alone. This latest support from government is a vital part of that process.”
Residents can check if they qualify and pledge their voucher on the Connect My Community website. Using the free vouchers enables Openreach to work with a local community to build a customised, co-funded network.
The vouchers can be combined to extend the ultrafast, ultra-reliable network to premises in outlying rural areas which won’t be covered by private investment.