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The Government’s Building Digital UK agency has published their December 2025 update on the delivery progress of contracts that have been awarded under their £5bn Project Gigabit broadband rollout scheme. The update reveals that some 183,380 contracted premises (up from 167,770 in Nov 2025) have so far been covered out of a planned total of 1,002,210.
Just to be clear. The figures in this update are not directly comparable to the figures published in BDUK’s general statistics releases. Today’s report tracks the number of contracted premises to which a supplier has delivered a gigabit-capable connection under the main subsidy scheme, whereas the official statistics include the number of premises that have also received a gigabit-capable connection as a result of any public BDUK subsidy (i.e. that covers other schemes too, like gigabit vouchers etc.).
At present over 88% of UK premises can already access a gigabit-capable network (here) and Ofcom separately forecasts that this could reach between 91-97% by January 2028 (here). Most of this has been delivered by commercial deployments (predominantly focused on urban and semi-urban areas), but there are some areas in the final 10-20% of premises that are simply too expensive for commercial providers to tackle.
Project Gigabit was originally established in 2021 to help extend broadband ISP networks capable of delivering download speeds of at least 1000Mbps (1Gbps) to achieve “nationwide” coverage (c.99%) by 2030 2032 (here) – focusing on the commercially unviable areas (usually rural and semi-rural locations). The project has already committed most of its budget up to 2030, but there are still some contracts yet to be awarded and others that have been scaled-back or switched suppliers (here, here, here and here).
At this point it’s worth remembering that all of the listed contracts were awarded at different times and are thus at very different stages of development (some started several years apart). A few of the listed contracts have already completed their delivery, such as Wessex Internet’s roll-out for North Dorset and GoFibre’s roll-outs for County Durham and North Northumberland.
Project Gigabit – Contracted Premises and Built Premises by Contract (Dec 2025)
| Contract | Supplier | Contracted premises | Built contracted premises |
| Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire and Milton Keynes | CityFibre | 21,030 | 2,460 |
| Bucks, Herts and East of Berks | CityFibre | 19,090 | 3,100 |
| CO1 Lancashire, West Berkshire, Staffordshire, Surrey, Hertfordshire, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire | Openreach | 54,340 | 8,330 |
| CO2 Devon, Mid Wales and South East Wales | Openreach | 42,270 | 4,690 |
| CO3 North Herefordshire, North Wales, Shropshire and South West Wales | Openreach | 52,060 | 50 |
| CO4 South Devon, Mid Devon and North Somerset | Openreach | 37,110 | 700 |
| CO5 Essex and North East England | Openreach | 24,710 | 300 |
| CO6 Rest of Scotland | Openreach | 65,070 | 290 |
| CO7 Worcestershire | Openreach | 22,600 | 10 |
| Cambridgeshire | CityFibre | 39,070 | 7,900 |
| Central Cornwall | Wildanet | 9,720 | 6,790 |
| Cornwall and Isle of Scilly | Wildanet | 14,430 | 2,240 |
| Cumbria | Fibrus | 53,540 | 25,980 |
| Derbyshire | Connect Fibre | 12,500 | 330 |
| Dorset and South Somerset | Wessex internet | 7,240 | 1,670 |
| Durham | GoFibre | 4,440 | 4,440 |
| East Gloucestershire | Gigaclear | 3,550 | 590 |
| East and West Sussex | CityFibre | 41,940 | 1,730 |
| Hampshire | CityFibre | 55,570 | 4,950 |
| Kent | CityFibre | 46,080 | 1,570 |
| Leicestershire and Warwickshire | CityFibre | 38,230 | 6,980 |
| Lincolnshire and East Riding | Quickline | 47,800 | 11,940 |
| New Forest | Wessex internet | 15,120 | 7,960 |
| Norfolk | CityFibre | 48,890 | 10,000 |
| North Dorset | Wessex internet | 6,480 | 6,480 |
| North East Staffordshire | Connect Fibre | 5,960 | 1,080 |
| North Oxfordshire | Gigaclear | 4,180 | 3,040 |
| North Shropshire | Freedom Fibre | 3,410 | 3,410 |
| Northern North Yorkshire | Quickline | 33,810 | 5,330 |
| Northumberland | GoFibre | 3,830 | 3,830 |
| Nottinghamshire and West Lincolnshire | CityFibre | 27,820 | 0 |
| South Oxfordshire | Gigaclear | 5,310 | 2,070 |
| South West Cornwall | Wildanet | 11,120 | 6,350 |
| South Wiltshire | Wessex internet | 18,790 | 3,890 |
| South Yorkshire | Quickline | 13,290 | 6,990 |
| Suffolk | CityFibre | 65,710 | 13,890 |
| West and Parts of North Yorkshire | Quickline | 26,310 | 12,390 |
| TOTAL | 1,002,400 | 183,380 |
We should point out that CityFibre’s progress under the £58.6m (public subsidy) contract for rural parts of Nottinghamshire and West Lincolnshire (Lot 10) needs to be taken in context, since Connexin originally held this until only a few months ago when they were acquired by CityFibre. Connexin only began the build phase at the end of last year (here), thus its delivery has been stuck in limbo due to that consolidation.
The above is an example of why it’s important to understand the context behind each contract before judging its delivery progress, since a face-value assessment will overlook key realities. Speaking of which, some of the contracted figures may differ from the original announcements, which reflects the usual contract modifications (i.e. the scope of delivery can increase or decrease, such as due to commercial builds by other operators going further than expected or builds costing more than expected etc.).
For some extra context, you can check out the previous figures for November 2025 (here) and October 2025 (here).