Openreach is urging residents in Llanuwchllyn and Clynnog Fawr to get behind a bid to bring ultrafast, ultra-reliable full fibre broadband to local homes and businesses.

The company says the communities risk missing out on a once-in-a-lifetime full fibre upgrade if they don’t apply for free UK Government broadband vouchers. Once they have them, they can be used to secure faster speeds and greater reliability.

If enough people sign up, residents of both rural villages will join around 30,000 homes and businesses across Gwynedd who already have access to full fibre broadband. Residents can check if they qualify and pledge their voucher on the Connect My Community website.

Funding through the Governments Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme and the deployment of new broadband signal boosting technology means thousands more remote rural communities are now within reach of the ultrafast technology.

Openreach identified Llanuwchllyn and Clynnog Fawr as being strong contenders for Full Fibre and is urging residents to take the next step by applying for and pooling together free UK Government Gigabit Vouchers to help fund the build.

Using the vouchers – which don’t cost residents anything, 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.

Martin Williams, Openreach’s Partnership Director for Wales, said: “This is an exciting opportunity for the people of Llanuwchllyn and Clynnog Fawr to bring all the benefits of ultrafast, ultra-reliable full fibre broadband to their communities.

“Our Fibre Community Partnership programme has meant that we’ve been able to potentially bring hundreds more communities across Wales and the rest of 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’s only possible with everyone working together – you, your neighbours and Openreach.

“Everyone who pledges a voucher will be doing their bit to help make both communities among the best-connected places in the UK.”

“We’re investing £15 billion 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.”

Once the pledge target for the scheme is reached, residents need to ensure they then validate their vouchers with the UK Government so that Openreach can confirm that building work can get underway. As part of the funding conditions residents are asked to commit to ordering a full fibre service from a provider of their choice for at least 12 months once the new network is available and confirm they are connected.

Full fibre technology provides more reliable, resilient, and future-proof connectivity; meaning fewer faults; more predictable, consistent speeds and enough capacity to easily meet growing data demands. It’s also future proof, which means it will serve generations to come and won’t need to be upgraded for decades.

Fibre optics - strands of glass around one-tenth the thickness of a human hair - transmit data using light signals. Fibre is smaller, lighter and more durable than copper cabling and less vulnerable to damage.