99 Percent of Cumbria UK Expected to Get Gigabit Broadband by 2026

The Cumberland Council in England has praised the progress being made on local broadband upgrades in the rural region, which they say has so far helped to extend “superfast” (30Mbps+) networks to cover more than 95% of premises and “gigabit” (1000Mbps+) connectivity to 62%. But they also “anticipate” that gigabit cover will “exceed 99% of properties by 2026“.

Going from gigabit broadband coverage of 62% to 99%+ by 2026 would suggest quite a significant level of rapid build progress for such a rural county, although this is contingent upon over £400m of both commercial and publicly funded broadband deployment programmes being able to reach completion in a timely fashion. Such work is being undertaken by various fixed network providers, such as Openreach (BT), nexfibre (Virgin Media), Fibrus, B4RN and others.

NOTE: The council also noted that current outdoor 4G (mobile) geographic coverage levels in Cumbria are “standing at over 91%” from at least one mobile provider and 65% from all 4 major UK network operators.

Part of the above effort reflects the £108m (state aid) Project Gigabit broadband rollout contract (Lot 28) for Cumbria (here and here), which was awarded to Fibrus in November 2022 and aims to cover 60,000 hard-to-reach premises “by 2026“. But we should insert a caveat that, when it comes to politics and build targets, the word “by” often means “by the end of“, rather than “before the start of“.

By comparison, the UK government is seeking to achieve “nationwide” (c.99%) coverage of gigabit-capable broadband ISP networks by 2030.

Cllr Chris Southward, Digital Champion, said:

“A huge amount of progress has been made in improving digital connectivity across the Cumberland area and it is great to see so many businesses and residents now reaping the benefits this brings.”

This is an exciting time in terms of the work being carried out to further improve connectivity and I would encourage everyone to check if they can improve the service to their premise and experience for themselves the difference it can make”.

Cumbria certainly has cause for such optimism, particularly since independent data from Thinkbroadband does show that gigabit broadband coverage in Cumberland increased from 37.4% in January 2024 to 60.2% in December 2024. This reflects an increase of 22.8 percentage points within the space of a year (or a growth rate of 60.96%), which, if maintained over the next two years, would enable them to reach their target.

The risk to this is that network deployments tend to slow down significantly, while often also getting disproportionately more expensive, as they reach into increasingly remote and rural communities. Suffice to say that there’s always the prospect for both commercial and publicly funded deployments, particularly in today’s heavily strained market, to fall short (i.e. take longer to reach their targets). Getting to the 60-75% mark is usually the easy part.

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