One of Pembrokeshire’s most notorious broadband ‘notspots’ has finally found a solution to their broadband access problems.

The area around St Davids and the communities to the north and west of the historic city are finally online thanks to local wireless broadband supplier TFL Group and the Welsh Assembly’s ‘Broadband Support’ initiative The Treleddyd Fawr Community Broadband Project – thought to be the first large scale project successfully processed under the Assembly’s Broadband Support Scheme - will see around 20 local businesses, including farms, holiday parks, artists’ studios and boat builders – as well as residential properties and the local RNLI lifeboat station - being able to access high speed (or indeed any speed) internet connections for the very first time. Historically, BT services in the area have been of such poor quality that even basic voice telephony was practically unusable for some residents.

The Treleddyd Fawr project will now receive 5mbps ADSL and SDSL broadband services, delivered from a brand new transmission tower, which TFL erected specifically for the task. TFL’s broadband carrier signal originates in Swansea and is transported over the company’s private wireless mast infrastructure, which runs throughout south, west and mid-Wales. An added benefit is that users may also now replace their poor quality BT telephone lines with free, IP (internet protocol) telephony services – resulting in a significant improvement for both internet/broadband and traditional telephone services in a single package.

“The far west of Pembrokeshire has suffered for years with poor telephone services, with the nearest telephone exchange in Solva being a massive 17km away,” commented Treleddyd Fawr Community Broadband project co-ordinator, John Warren. “BT effectively gave up on us a long time ago, and so the onus has been very much on us to come together as a community and solve our own access problems. Realistically, wireless delivery with the support of the Welsh Assembly’s Broadband Support scheme has been the only viable option,” he added.

“Treleddyd Fawr and the area around St Davids is one of the most poorly-served areas of BT’s network that we have ever seen,” commented TFL Group director, Jonathan England. “Not only were basic internet services completely unobtainable, but in many cases the communications signal was so weak that even basic telephone services were practically unusable. This project would not have been completed in such a short time without the help of the Assembly’s broadband support scheme and consequently, we are expecting the new high-speed telephony services to make a huge impact to business and homes in the area, with a signal that can be easily upgraded and extended to anywhere else within the region, as necessary,” he said.

According to TFL, wireless delivery of broadband services to Wales’ ‘notspot’ areas remains the only realistic alternative for households or businesses that cannot already receive a broadband service via their local BT exchange. TFL is the only communications provider in Wales to own its own wireless communications tower infrastructure, which places it in an ideal position to deliver cost-effective, high-speed wireless broadband services to those areas of Wales who are unable to access broadband services via conventional means.