People in a popular village near Newtown are being warned that they could miss out in a "once-in-a-life-time" upgrade to get faster broadband after not enough residents have signed up for a scheme so far.

Openreach is urging people in Kerry to get behind a bid to bring ultrafast, ultra-reliable Full Fibre broadband to local homes and businesses.

The company has called for local people to request free UK Government broadband vouchers, which can be used to secure faster speeds.

The scheme needs 165 vouchers to be pledged but currently only 70 have been pledged so more people need to sign up to make sure the growing village joins the more than 700,00 homes and businesses across Wales that can already access full fibre broadband.

County Times:

Funding through the UK Government’s Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme and the deployment of new broadband signal boosting technology – which can extend the reach of the Full Fibre network, means thousands more remote rural communities like Kerry are now within reach of the ultrafast technology.

Openreach has identified the town as being within scope for Full Fibre and is urging local people to take the next step by applying for and pooling together free UK Government Gigabit vouchers to help fund the build.

Residents can check if they qualify and pledge their voucher on the Connect My Community website. 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: “Everyone who pledges a voucher will be doing their bit to help make Kerry one of 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 UK Government is a vital part of that process.”