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ISPreview has spotted that the Welsh Government (WG) have today issued a formal tender notice for their £70m (state aid) “Extending High Speed Broadband” (EHSB) project for Wales. In its current form, this aims to help extend faster broadband to around 29,000 premises in poorly served areas (i.e. locations that can’t yet access 30Mbps+ speeds).
Regular readers may recall that the WG first began to explore the viability of such a project in May 2023 via a Prior Information Notice (here). We then got another update in April 2025 (here) and saw market engagement in June 2025 (here). The project is intended to complement the UK Government’s wider £5bn Project Gigabit programme, which aims to reach “nationwide” (c.99%) coverage of gigabit-capable broadband by 2032.
However, it’s already acknowledged that not even Project Gigabit will be enough to completely cater for every remote rural location (i.e. some premises are just too expensive / remote), which is why the WG decided to establish the EHSB framework. This is funded by £70m that was “clawed back” from BT (Openreach) as part of the original Superfast Cymru project (i.e. public funding returned for reinvestment as take-up increased).
The last update in June 2025 represented the market engagement phase (i.e. trying to identify suppliers with an interest) and today’s update sees the final Framework for the EHSB being put out to tender. All submissions for this must be in by 26th November 2025, and it’s currently estimated that contracts could be awarded to suppliers by 20th January 2026.
What does the EHSB Framework look like?
The current design for this framework includes two LOTS. The first LOT, valued at £60m, will be for projects that require the installation of broadband network infrastructure to 1,000 premises and over (this sounds like cluster sizing). The second LOT, valued at £10m, will be for projects that require the installation of broadband network infrastructure to under 1,000 premises (i.e. smaller communities). Suppliers are permitted to apply for either or both lots.
The WG currently “expects the first Framework will commence early 2026 with the first call-off contract under the Framework being awarded shortly thereafter“. However, final details about how many premises will benefit, how much of the funding will be applied and what network technology is to be used (FTTP is highly likely) won’t be known until after the contracts have been awarded.
As we’ve said before, the WG already has form in working with Openreach (BT) on past contracts, so they’re expected to be a front-runner for bids. But Ogi, Netomnia and Virgin Media (inc. nexfibre) are other potential options. The catch is that Virgin Media’s future expansion via nexfibre remains uncertain past 2025 (here), while Ogi would probably need more investment first and Netomnia has generally shown little interest in projects that involve state-aid.
Splitting £70m between 29,000 premises returns a per premises public subsidy of just over £2,400 and that’s modestly higher than the subsidised contracts under Project Gigabit, which tend to sit around sub-£2k territory (likely to have changed a bit due to recent contract modifications). We must remember that the framework will be focusing on some of the toughest and thus most expensive parts of the country, which is not an easy or quick area to resolve.