The broadband provider Openreach has been urged to provide faster broadband to a rural village in North Wales, where it can take up to 70 minutes to download a film in standard definition.
Residents living in the small village of Brithdir, near Dolgellau said download speeds were as low as 1-3 megabits per second (Mbps) leaving them among the slowest in the UK, NorthWales Live reports.
Although the area network provider Openreach had promised to upgrade the local broadband, it has currently paused its rural fibre connection scheme, citing high demand.
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Residents and businesses in the rural Meirionnydd community have a longstanding community fibre application in place with Openreach, having secured the necessary funding to progress with the scheme.
They say the speeds provided by Openreach means it can take up to 70 minutes to download a film in standard definition, and watching the same movie in high-definition would take 17 hours with continual buffering.
Brithdir resident Stuart Marsh said: "I had been chasing Community Fibre all through December, but they were very quiet, I just didn't hear anything from them. I’d been chasing them on a few things and had heard nothing back where previously, they were quite informative.
"Eventually, we received a message to say that all Community Fibre projects are on hold. We had secured the necessary funding but were told just after Christmas that all projects are on hold.
"It's not just our project. It's everything, but no reason was given. We are just not being given enough information. This has been going on and off with different projects since before the start of the Covid pandemic.
"We've been promised and promised different things. We get so far. We get to the point of being almost there and it just comes to a grinding halt, and that's the frustrating thing."
Locals have called on Openreach to take urgent action to resume work and alerted Dwyfor Meirionydd MP Liz Saville Roberts to their plight.
She said the stance taken by Openreach had worsened the "digital divide" in Wales.
The Plaid Cymru MP has called Openreach to urgently resume its Fibre Community Partnership (FCP) scheme which has been put on indefinite hold due to an apparent surge in demand.
In response to correspondence from Ms Saville Roberts Openreach confirmed all their Fibre Community Partnership (FCP) schemes are now under review, with all existing applications put on hold indefinitely.
Ms Saville Roberts said: "I am deeply concerned that Openreach has taken the decision to put all their community fibre schemes on hold, a move which will understandably disappoint many communities such as residents in Brithdir in my constituency who were led to believe that their scheme was progressing.
"Having reached this point in the process and with the necessary funding in place, my constituents are justifiably frustrated, as am I, at the sudden decision to put all existing community fibre schemes on hold, including those nearing completion."
She added: "I urge Openreach to provide my constituents and others in the same situation, with immediate clarity as to the status of their community fibre application and with a realistic and reliable timescale for completion of works.
"People living in rural areas such as parts of Dwyfor Meirionnydd are already at a disproportionate disadvantage when it comes to accessing fast, reliable broadband.
"Delays to a specific scheme which aims to connect those who do not commercially or governmentally qualify for fibre broadband only serves to compound matters, further aggravating the digital divide between rural and urban areas."
Openreach said it was working to build an "ultrafast ultra-reliable" full fibre network across Wales.
But a spokesman added: "Our fibre community partnership has been an incredibly popular scheme and due to high levels of demand, we had to temporarily pause new registrations while we worked through existing requests."
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