BDUK Issue First 2025 Update on UK Project Gigabit Broadband Progress | ISPreview UK

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The Government’s (DSIT) Building Digital UK agency has today published their first 2025 progress report on the £5bn Project Gigabit broadband rollout scheme, which covers the April to December 2024 period. The data reveals that some 1,188,400 UK premises have received gigabit-capable broadband coverage by BDUK’s gigabit programmes since their inception.

At present around 88% of UK premises can already access a gigabit-capable network (here) and Ofcom separately forecasts that this could hit around 97% by May 2027 (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 itself was originally established in 2021 to help extend broadband ISP networks capable of delivering download speeds of at least 1000Mbps (1Gbps), and uploads of at least 200Mbps, 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 failed or been scaled-back (here, here and here).

The project primarily consists of several support schemes, including the Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme (£210m), funding to extend Dark Fibre around the public sector (£110m) and gap-funded deployments with suppliers (mostly the rest of funding) – known as the Gigabit Infrastructure Subsidy (GIS) programme.

However, the progress reports on this scheme have, over the past year or so, become gradually less and less detailed (they also used to be published on a quarterly basis). The latest one follows this trend, but we do get a fair bit of detail in the spreadsheet, even if there seem to be no updates on Project Gigabit’s future contract pipeline.

What’s New in the July 2025 Update

Overall, BDUK sestimate that their interventions delivered 113,700 premises with gigabit-capable broadband coverage between 1st April 2024 and 31st December 2024. In total this means that a cumulative estimate of 1,188,400 premises have received gigabit-capable coverage via BDUK’s gigabit programmes since their inception.

Of the premises delivered by BDUK between 1 April 2024 and 31 December 2024:

• 38% (43,400) were delivered under the Government Infrastructure Subsidy scheme (GIS, Gigabit contracts)
• 38% (42,900) were delivered by Vouchers (gigabit broadband voucher scheme)
• 24% (27,500) were delivered by “Superfast & Hubs”

Take note that BDUK count both directly subsidised premises as well as uncommercial premises that were not directly funded but received connections as a result of nearby BDUK funded projects. “As a result, all premises passed figures are estimates based on a combination of raw supplier data and modelled estimates,” said BDUK.

The spreadsheets also include some additional data and a regional breakdown of the figures, as well as by each contract, which we’ve included below. One key thing to note below is that Project Gigabit itself has still only delivered a relatively small amount of gigabit coverage, with the earlier ‘Superfast Broadband Programme‘ (SFBB) still holding the lion’s share.

BDUK – Gigabit Premises Passed by Year, Country and Region

Premises Passed by Year and BDUK Intervention Type

Premises Contracted and Passed by GIS Contracts (Progress to Dec 2024)

Project Gigabit / BDUK Delivery Performance
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/bduk-delivery-performance-quarterly-april-2024-to-december-2024