Welsh region sees surge in full fibre broadband coverage

Nation.Cymru staff

Full fibre broadband coverage has risen sharply across a Welsh region in just two years, with one area seeing availability jump from 51% to 87%.

The latest figures show substantial increases across all four council areas in the Swansea Bay City Region, although rural Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire continue to lag behind.

Figures from ThinkBroadband for June 2026 show the proportion of premises in Neath Port Talbot able to access full fibre broadband has increased by 36 percentage points since 2024.

There have also been substantial increases in Swansea, where coverage has risen from 63% to 90%, Carmarthenshire, from 60% to 78%, and Pembrokeshire, from 58% to 77%.

Swansea is now above the Wales-wide full fibre coverage figure of 87%, while Neath Port Talbot has reached the national average.

However, the figures show a continuing gap between the more urban parts of the region and its largely rural western counties.

Around one in five premises in Carmarthenshire and almost one in four in Pembrokeshire remain without access to full fibre.

Full fibre, also known as fibre to the premises or FTTP, takes fibre-optic cable directly to a home or business rather than relying on older copper connections for the final part of the network.

The Swansea Bay City Deal said the number of premises receiving broadband speeds below 10 Mbps had also fallen substantially, although it acknowledged more work was needed for those still receiving poor services.

Several publicly funded schemes are intended to reach premises that have yet to benefit from faster broadband.

They include the Better Broadband Infill Project and the Welsh Government’s £70m Extending High Speed Broadband Project, both of which target premises receiving speeds below 30 Mbps.

The UK Government’s Project Gigabit is also focused on improving connections in rural and other hard-to-reach areas.

Mobile coverage

Mobile coverage has also improved across the region, although the figures show a greater disparity when measuring coverage from all mobile operators.

Ofcom figures show between 98% and 99% of premises in each of the four council areas had access to at least one 4G network by January 2026.

But the proportion covered by all mobile network operators was lower.

In Carmarthenshire, that figure increased from 66% in January 2024 to 81% two years later, while Neath Port Talbot rose from 73% to 84%.

Pembrokeshire increased from 77% to 86%, while Swansea rose from 85% to 88%.

Upgraded masts

The Shared Rural Network programme has involved new and upgraded mobile phone masts aimed at reducing areas with limited or no coverage.

Jonathan Burnes, Swansea Bay City Deal portfolio director, said: “The scale of improvement we are seeing across the Swansea Bay City Region is remarkable. In just a few years, full fibre and mobile connectivity have improved significantly, including in many rural communities that have traditionally been harder to reach.

“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.”

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