Wales' highest house gets fastest broadband

A farmhouse halfway up Wales' highest mountain now has some of the fastest broadband speeds in Britain.

The isolated property on the slopes of Yr Wyddfa, also known as Snowdon, has been connected to ultrafast fibre optic cable.

Until now, the family home has been firmly off-grid without even a traditional landline phone.

The house has been brought into the 21st Century as part of a project to get fibre broadband to the summit of the mountain.

"I didn't believe we'd get it and it's a bit of miracle really that it's finally got here," said Eira Morris, who has brought up her four children in the farmhouse.

"It will just make everything easier - daily life.

"We can watch normal television, Netflix, everything that everyone else can get down in the village."

But it is not just about entertainment at Hafodty farmhouse.

It is also about basics most people now take for granted, which means having access to a phone and an internet connection.

"The mobile phone signal can be quite touchy sometimes, it depends on the weather," added Eira.

"The phone has to be propped up in the window all the time, just to pick up the signal, and you have to answer your phone on speakerphone and just stand there by the window to have a conversation.

"The other choice is to drive down the road and sit in the car and have a conversation in the car."

The farmhouse lies in the Cwm Brwnynog valley below the 1,085m (3,560ft) summit of Yr Wyddfa.

Sitting between Hebron and Halfway stations on the Snowdon Mountain Railway, it has been dubbed the highest house in Wales locally, and sitting at about 300m (1,000ft) above sea level, it certainly feels remote.

Its location means also means it is slap bang in the heart of the national park, with strict planning rules.

Those have meant telegraph poles for power or phone lines are strictly forbidden.

Instead, over the last 20 years, the family has had to rely on a diesel generator for power, and heating comes from a traditional iron range stove in the kitchen.

"It's challenging at times," accepted Eira's son Elis.

Now working as a farmer and fencer, he has lived at the farmhouse all his life.

"But we love it here."

Memories of school still linger for the 20-year-old, growing up without access to social media or the internet at home.

"When we were in school it was fine - we had phones and data plans - but then you come home without it," he said.

Simple things such as homework meant a trip down to the nearby village of Llanberis to use public wifi connections to get on the internet.

"It was difficult - we struggled - but we got through it," added Elis

His sister Beca, 18, said she came face-to-face with the challenges recently, while applying to join the army.

"It was very hard, trying to get hold of the recruiters, them trying to get hold of me - and I didn't know for days.

"And then trying to explain that to them the situation."

But that is now all changing, with the new ultrafast connection.

It is a one gigabit fibre optic broadband link, which is about 10 times faster than normal broadband speeds.

A two-hour film in 4K would take under two minutes to download, while getting hold of your favourite 100 songs takes about seven seconds to download.

"This is life changing for us - monumental," said Elis.

Connecting their home is part of a much wider project to bring ultrafast broadband to the buildings on the summit of the mountain.

Openreach, which is responsible for the UK's physical telecoms network, has been working with the Snowdon Mountain Railway to link the Hafod Eryri summit cafe and station to the digital exchange in Llanberis.

It has been able to use the track infrastructure of the railway as a way to take the fibre optic cables up the mountain safely, and without further damage to the environment.

“To say that bringing full fibre to the top of Yr Wyddfa is a huge task is an understatement," said Suzanne Rutherford, Openreach's chief engineer for Wales.

“You just have to look at the sheer scale of Yr Wyddfa to appreciate how big a job this is for our engineers and that’s before you even take into consideration weather conditions."

As winter closes in on the mountain, it will be spring before the work will be complete.

But once it is finished, it will mean thousands of visitors to the summit centre will have access to things such as contactless payment in the cafe.

More than that, Openreach said it will allow a small mobile communications mast to be established at the centre, to provide emergency mobile coverage for mountain rescue services.

“We’re all extremely proud at Openreach of the work we’re doing to not only bring full fibre to what will be the highest point across all of the UK, but also the improved connectivity that it will bring for visitors to the summit, families that live under the shadow of Yr Wyddfa and of course how our technology could potentially save lives," said Ms Rutherford.

For the Morris family, it is the simpler joys of technology they are anticipating.

"To get a phone signal will be fantastic," said Eira.

"To be able to just sit on the sofa and play with the phone and watch the televison."

"Netflix and our phones," chimed Elis and Beca.