Original article ISPreview UK:
The Conservative MP for Bridgwater, Sir Ashley Fox, this week informed other Ministers that Openreach (BT) had raised “concerns that there is a shortfall in funding from the last spending review“, which he said meant there is a “risk that the Government do not meet their 99% gigabit-coverage target by 2032“.
The vast majority of gigabit broadband coverage has so far been delivered via commercial deployments (private investment) and that continues to be the case today, with the likes of Openreach and Netomnia taking the lead. On top of that, both the present Government has also been running the £5bn Project Gigabit scheme (setup by the previous Gov in 2021), which aims to help make 1000Mbps+ (gigabit) broadband speeds available to c.99% of UK premises by 2032 (this was already pushed back from 2030 last year).
NOTE: Project Gigabit is designed to focus on areas of market failure, mostly reflecting premises in the final 10-20% in hard-to-reach rural areas. Some 89.6% of UK premises can already access such a network (
here), with Ofcom forecasting between 91% and 97% by January 2028 (
here).
According to the Government’s most recent Spending Review (here), which covers the period from 2026/27 to 2029/30, some £1.9 billion of public investment was still available for the Building Digital UK (BDUK) agency to deliver the next phase in the transformation of the country’s digital infrastructure (i.e. gigabit broadband and mobile).
Some of that £1.9bn has since been allocated to related projects, such as the Single Supplier Framework they have with Openreach for Project Gigabit that recently increased in value from “up to” £800m to c.£1.2bn (here). But the latest suggestion is that more funding may be required to achieve the Project’s ultimate target on time.
Conservative MP Sir Ashley Fox said:
“Many villages are still looking at waits until 2030 for the roll-out of broadband, and I worry that some might have to wait even longer. Openreach has shared with me its concerns that there is a shortfall in funding from the last spending review, meaning that there is a risk that the Government do not meet their 99% gigabit-coverage target by 2032, which is already an unacceptably long time for my constituents in remote rural areas to wait to be connected. It would be intolerable if it were to be delayed further.
Will the Minister clarify in his response whether he believes he has sufficient funding to meet the 99% target? When will the Government bring forward their statement of strategic priorities for Ofcom, which is a critical step to shape the next phase of the UK’s digital infrastructure journey? The Minister will know that the consultation on this ended in September; we await his Department’s response. This Government are quick to issue a consultation, but they seem rather slower to act.”
Just for some context on the impact of Government schemes on gigabit broadband coverage. As at the end of September 2025, over 1.3 million premises in rural and hard-to-reach areas across the UK had already been upgraded to gigabit networks through publicly subsidised programmes. In addition, over 1 million premises are now included in signed Project Gigabit contracts worth £2.4bn in total, although we’re expecting this to rise.
However, the suggestion above is that the revised target of 99% coverage by 2032 may also be missed, although the government’s representative in this week’s debate, Kanishka Narayan (MP for the Vale of Glamorgan), was quick to point out that “Openreach has not made that representation to me“.
The MP added that the “Government are squarely focused on reaching the 99% target, and we are doing all we can to make sure that all providers are in a place to do so. I am happy to engage with Openreach if it wants to make a representation to me“. Naturally ISPreview queried this with Openreach, which provided the following response.
A spokesperson for Openreach said:
“Openreach welcomed the Government’s commitment to retain funding for Project Gigabit in the last spending review. BDUK is working constructively with industry on how the programme can help sustain the build momentum needed to reach the Government’s target of 99% gigabit coverage by 2032, and Openreach stands ready to work with Government to deliver that goal.
A failure to fund these upgrades as initially intended would put economic growth in these areas at risk, while increasing the taxpayer’s exposure if deployment takes longer as supply chains begin to be stood down.”
At present it’s not clear how much of a funding shortfall may actually exist and that will partly depend upon several uncertain factors, such as in terms of precisely how far commercial operators will deploy by 2032 (without recourse to public investment) and the same for those holding various contracts under the subsidised Project Gigabit scheme. The Building Delivery UK (BDUK) agency currently tracks future deployment plans for the next 3 years and anything past that tends to be more uncertain.
In addition, we’ve already seen a number of smaller alternative networks retreat from their Project Gigabit contracts (e.g. Freedom Fibre, Voneus, FullFibre Ltd.) and others may yet follow. Some of those will end up being absorbed into Openreach’s Cross-Regional (Type C) framework under the same scheme. But the more remote the area, the greater costs tend to rise – disproportionately so – until they fall out of economic viability.
If we consider the current contracts and delivery plans, then ISPreview can roughly estimate that the UK may be on course for around 95-97% coverage of gigabit-capable broadband by 2030; but there’s plenty of room for variability in that. The economic climate has changed a lot since Project Gigabit was founded in 2021 and not for the better, so what was once possible under the old budget may no longer be the case, hence the potential for a shortfall.
At the same time, we shouldn’t forget that Openreach’s own commercial target of reaching “up to” 30 million UK premises with full fibre (FTTP) by 2030 is currently being linked by the operator to the need for a favourable outcome from Ofcom’s forthcoming Telecoms Access Review 2026 (TAR). Suffice to say that there may be a mix of both industry and regulator negotiation, as well as real-world economics, at play in all this.
The lengthy time horizon involved could also carry some political relevance, since it’s currently unclear whether the existing government would be either willing or able to pump more public investment into the project to ensure that the pace of build remains strong enough to reach the 2032 target. Such things may end up being perceived as a problem for the next government to tackle, which could mean delays. Time will tell.
