The latest independent data on national broadband coverage has revealed that 70% of premises across the United Kingdom have now been put within reach of a gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network, which is up strongly from 60.54% at the end of last year and 67.68% in July 2024 (these premises are all classed as ‘Ready for Service’).
The development, which is based on data from Thinkbroadband, shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise because network operators, such as Openreach (BT), Virgin Media (inc. Nexfibre), CityFibre, Netomnia, Hyperoptic, Gigaclear and many more (Summary of UK Full Fibre Builds), have been rolling out fibre optic lines at a fair rate of knots over the past few years.
The majority of this progress has so far stemmed from commercial builds, although the UK Government’s state aid funded £5bn Project Gigabit programme is now starting to play a larger role via a growing number of build contracts. All of those deals are focused upon covering the final 10-20% of hardest to reach premises (i.e. aiming to extend gigabit coverage to at least 85% of UK premises by 2025 and then around 99% “nationwide” by 2030).
Looking forward, Ofcom recently predicted (here) that full fibre (FTTP) broadband ISP lines are currently on course to cover 95-96% of all UK properties by May 2027 (29 million premises), which rises to around 97-98% for “gigabit-capable” networks (FTTP and HFC / Cable).
Naturally, none of this will mean anything to those of you who still live in poorly served areas (often rural locations and some patches in urban areas), where the wait for something better to arrive continues to be a slow and painful one. But the fact is that we’re continuing to see both rapid and dramatic progress in the roll-out, which is making for an ever-smaller gap left to fill.