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The Government’s (DSIT) Building Digital UK agency has today finally started to publish monthly updates on the delivery progress of contracts that have been awarded under their £5bn Project Gigabit broadband rollout scheme, which among other things reveals that some 150,730 contracted premises have already been built out of a planned total of 1,002,270 (October 2025).
Just to be clear. The figures in this update are not directly comparable to the figures published in BDUK’s official statistics releases; they track the number of contracted premises to which the supplier has delivered a gigabit-capable connection, whereas the official statistics report on the number of premises that have received a gigabit-capable connection as a result of public BDUK subsidy (i.e. those also cover other schemes, like vouchers etc.).
At present over 88% of UK premises can already access a gigabit-capable network (here) and Ofcom separately forecasts that this could hit c.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 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 failed or been scaled-back (here, here and here).
At this point it’s worth remembering that all of the listed contracts below were awarded at different times. For example, Openreach’s cross-regional (Type C) deployments are some of the most recent ones – awarded between 2024 and 2025, while the contracts for North Dorset (Wessex Internet), Teesdale (GoFire) and a few others are the oldest and awarded all the way back in 2022. In short, they’re all at different stages of development.
Project Gigabit – Contracted Premises and Built Premises by Contract (Oct 2025)
| Contract | Supplier | Contracted premises | Built contracted premises |
| Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire and Milton Keynes | CityFibre | 21,030 | 1,580 |
| Bucks, Herts and East of Berks | CityFibre | 19,090 | 2,140 |
| CO1 Lancashire, West Berkshire, Staffordshire, Surrey, Hertfordshire, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire | Openreach | 54,340 | 3,810 |
| CO2 Devon, Mid Wales and South East Wales | Openreach | 42,270 | 2,790 |
| 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 | 50 |
| CO5 Essex and North East England | Openreach | 24,710 | 90 |
| CO6 Rest of Scotland | Openreach | 65,070 | 0 |
| CO7 Worcestershire | Openreach | 22,600 | 0 |
| Cambridgeshire | CityFibre | 39,070 | 6,570 |
| Central Cornwall | Wildanet | 9,720 | 6,640 |
| Cornwall and Isle of Scilly | Wildanet | 14,540 | 2,010 |
| Cumbria | Fibrus | 53,540 | 22,090 |
| Derbyshire | Connect Fibre | 12,500 | 330 |
| Dorset and South Somerset | Wessex Internet | 7,240 | 1,470 |
| Durham | GoFibre | 4,460 | 4,260 |
| East Gloucestershire | Gigaclear | 3,550 | 110 |
| East and West Sussex | CityFibre | 41,940 | 880 |
| Hampshire | CityFibre | 55,570 | 4,300 |
| Kent | CityFibre | 46,080 | 950 |
| Leicestershire and Warwickshire | CityFibre | 38,230 | 4,720 |
| Lincolnshire and East Riding | Quickline Communications | 47,800 | 9,210 |
| New Forest | Wessex Internet | 15,120 | 7,740 |
| Norfolk | CityFibre | 48,950 | 8,650 |
| North Dorset | Wessex Internet | 6,710 | 6,490 |
| North East Staffordshire | Connect Fibre | 5,960 | 1,080 |
| North Oxfordshire | Gigaclear | 4,180 | 2,660 |
| North Shropshire | Freedom Fibre | 3,410 | 3,410 |
| Northern North Yorkshire | Quickline Communications | 33,810 | 3,640 |
| Northumberland | GoFibre | 3,830 | 3,830 |
| Nottinghamshire and West Lincolnshire | CityFibre | 27,820 | 0 |
| South Oxfordshire | Gigaclear | 5,310 | 1,150 |
| South West Cornwall | Wildanet | 11,120 | 6,170 |
| South Wiltshire | Wessex Internet | 18,240 | 3,610 |
| South Yorkshire | Quickline Communications | 13,290 | 6,320 |
| Suffolk | CityFibre | 65,710 | 11,670 |
| West and Parts of North Yorkshire | Quickline Communications | 26,310 | 10,090 |
| TOTAL | 1,002,270 | 150,730 |
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) is perhaps a bit misleading (0 premises), since Connexin originally held this until only a few months ago – after they were acquired by CityFibre. Connexin only began the build phase at the end of last year (here), thus its delivery has been disrupted by the 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 some of the realities. Speaking of which, some of the contracted figures may differ from the original announcements, which reflects recent contract modifications (the scope of delivery can increase or decrease, such as due to commercial networks going further than expected or builds costing more than expected etc.).
Otherwise, we intend to keep an eye on these progress reports and post occasional updates, but we won’t be spamming by publishing monthly progress updates.