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A new report has revealed how much Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband coverage exists across the top 15 National Parks in England, Scotland and Wales. Overall the top performing park was found to be the Yorkshire Dales (57.05%), while on the flip side Loch Lomond and The Trossachs (28.23%) delivered the weakest coverage.
The latest independent data from Thinkbroadband notes that some 87.45% of UK premises can now access a gigabit-capable broadband network (reflecting a combination of Hybrid Fibre Coax and Full Fibre networks), which falls to 77.27% when only looking at full fibre (FTTP) technology.
However, full fibre coverage is naturally going to be much lower in remote rural areas, which are much more expensive to reach (partly due to homes being very sparse and widely dispersed over longer distances) and thus tend to be last on the list for operators to upgrade.
The government’s £5bn Project Gigabit programme (i.e. aiming to extend gigabit broadband to c.99% coverage by 2030), as well as earlier schemes under the Building Digital UK (BDUK) framework, have worked and are still working to tackle the issue of poor rural broadband coverage, but it’s an inherently slow and complex process. Suffice to say that this is reflected in the latest coverage data for National Parks.
Top 15 UK National Parks for Full Fibre Broadband Cover (A-Z)
| National Park | % Superfast (30Mbps+) Cover | % Full Fibre Cover | % Under 10Mbps |
| Bannau Brycheiniog | 86.79% | 54.49% | 10.40% |
| Cairngorms | 78.74% | 49.96% | 13.90% |
| Dartmoor | 98.06% | 40.90% | 0.90% |
| Eryri | 90.75% | 51.46% | 5.20% |
| Exmoor | 96.59% | 35.14% | 1.90% |
| Lake District | 87.72% | 49.35% | 6.70% |
| Loch Lomond and The Trossachs | 90.87% | 28.23% | 3.50% |
| New Forest | 87.40% | 43.59% | 4.40% |
| North York Moors | 79.65% | 35.20% | 14.80% |
| Northumberland | 62.40% | 53.60% | 28.10% |
| Peak District | 83.21% | 35.50% | 10.10% |
| Pembrokeshire Coast | 92.55% | 43.00% | 4.50% |
| South Downs | 92.43% | 43.25% | 3.30% |
| The Broads | 91.23% | 41.04% | 3.40% |
| Yorkshire Dales | 90.06% | 57.05% | 6.40% |