Customers in the South East of England who may be looking to sign-up with SpaceX’s popular Starlink service, which offers ultrafast broadband connectivity via a global mega constellation of satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), may have to wait a bit longer as the network in that area is now “at capacity“.

At present Starlink’s network has a staggering 6,906 satellites (c.2,800 are v2 Mini / GEN 2A) in orbit – mostly at altitudes of c.500-600km – and they’re in the process of adding thousands more by the end of 2027. Customers in the UK typically pay from £75 a month for a 30-day term, plus £299 for hardware on the ‘Standard’ unlimited data plan (inc. £19 postage), which promises latency times of 25-60ms, downloads of c. 25-100Mbps and uploads of c. 5-10Mbps.

However, from time-to-time parts of their network may reach a capacity limit, which means that Starlink’s standard fixed residential service is full and new activations are not possible unless more data capacity is introduced. This is done to avoid the impact of excess subscriptions causing a bigger detriment to service quality (performance / speeds) for existing customers.

The issue of capacity isn’t just a matter of how many satellites Starlink has in orbit and their capabilities (inc. any limitations of the chosen radio spectrum bands), but also of how many ground stations you have active in the same area and whether they have enough capacity to effectively feed current demand. Localised capacity issues often tend to reflect more of an issue with ground stations, which can take a little bit of time to rectify (usually a few weeks or months).

In this case, a large swathe of South East England, mostly reflecting the Greater London area and parts of several surrounding counties (see picture – top), has reached capacity (credits to Thinkbroadband for spotting this). This means that anybody putting in an order for the standard fixed residential service will be placed on a waiting list until the issue is resolved.

So far as we can recall, this is the first time that any significant part of the UK has reached one of Starlink’s capacity limits, although it’s perhaps not too surprising given that the service’s broadband speeds seem to have declined across the UK over the past six months (details here). Nevertheless, this should still be considered as a fairly routine part of how the service works, with various other patches of the world also dipping into and out of the company’s capacity limits over time.

Low-cost broadband ISP Plusnet (BT Group), which over the past few years has already lost many of its extra features (pay TV, home phone (on FTTP), mobile etc.), appears to have added yet another service to the digital dustbin after customers began complaining that they could no longer add a Static IP address to their accounts.

Concern about future support for the Static IP feature, which costs an extra £5 per month to add, first emerged over the summer after some customers reported to ISPreview that they were no longer able to add the service to their accounts. But on 20th August 2024 a spokesperson for the provider denied this and told ISPreview that they “don’t currently have any plans to remove this option” (customers were still able to manually request it).

However, regular readers will know that we don’t put much stock in statements that use a “no plans” style response, since that phrase is easily one of the most used and abused in the modern PR arsenal. Plans can and often do change, frequently at short notice. Sadly, it seems as if that has once again proven to be true.

Several of Plusnet’s customers recently contacted ISPreview to complain that the provider’s support staff were no longer allowing Static IP addresses to be requested, with those who attempted to do so being told that the feature had been discontinued. A related information page and the provider’s T&C’s also appear to have been updated to remove related references. Several related posts about this can be found on their community forum (here, here and here).

Sample Customer Complaint 1 (norliss)

“My full fibre service was activated earlier so I thought it I’d log in and buy a static IP address but the option was no longer there. I called up and was told this was no longer available. If this is the case it seems to have been dropped very suddenly and with no notice?”

Sample Customer Complaint 2 (salxyz)

“I’ve just called PN to enquire about getting a static IP address. Initially I was doing a bit of research and saw your could buy one for £5 from the add on section of your account, but this no longer seems to be the case. PN told me over the phone that static IP addresses are no longer being issued.”

Sample Customer Complaint 3 (Mark)

“Looks like Plusnet have removed the static IP option – it’s missing as an add on from everyone’s account and a few posts on the forum that when you call PN, response is that it’s no longer available. No mention yet what happens to existing IP’s – posts in last couple of days across the forum from people getting the same answer when they call.”

Yesterday, one of the provider’s community admins (JordanTA) finally confirmed the development: “The option for new static IPs was removed in October it looks like, those with existing static IPs will remain unaffected“. The fact that existing customers will continue to be supported is a positive sign, but it remains unclear how long that will last, although Plusnet’s own statement does slightly contradict their community admin with respect to the timeline.

A spokesperson for Plusnet told ISPreview:

“The Plusnet £5 Static IP option was withdrawn for new customers wishing to add it on to their account on the 18th December 2024 but remains in service for existing subscribers for the foreseeable future. Our guides remain on hand to support these customers with managing their Static IP service.”

Rochdale-base broadband ISP Zen Internet has revealed that they saw their busiest ever period for network traffic on 4th December 2024, when streaming of live Premier League Football caused usage on their network to peak at 17% higher than 2023’s record and 10% above the average for a typical December evening. This was a 4% increase over their previous record high in September 2024.

Reinforcing the football connection, October’s traffic figures also show that the largest peak for that month occurred on Tuesday 1st, another live Champions League night on Amazon Prime. In that case, Arsenal vs Paris St. Germain helped drive an 11.95% increase in traffic over the previous day.

In addition to football, several other major events also contributed to notable spikes in Zen’s network activity. For example, daytime traffic soared over 20% above average on 2nd November 2024 as floods in Valencia and Kemi Badenoch’s election as Conservative Party leader dominated the UK news cycle. The conflict in Gaza also produced a sharp rise on 9th July 2024, due to heightened engagement with news sites and social media.

Zen also indicates that 2024’s network patterns may be reflecting a “shift away from video games and gaming-related content as dominant traffic drivers“. Unlike in previous years, “no significant peaks” were attributed by Zen to game launches, “likely due to staggered release strategies prioritising pre-orders and phased rollouts“.

Zen CEO, Richard Tang, said:

“This trend of surging traffic during Amazon’s live football broadcasts underscores their widespread appeal. Matches available to Amazon Prime subscribers at no additional cost draw far larger audiences than traditional pay-per-view options, solidifying live sports as a major driver of network demand.

Conversely, England’s advance to the final of the European Championships (Euros) this summer barely moved the dial on Zen’s network statistics. It seems that most people still prefer to watch football on terrestrial channels when it’s possible to do so, even when streaming is also available.”

Zen’s review of its 2024 network usage also highlights a consistent growth in internet traffic throughout the 12-month period, reflecting the global trend of increased internet usage (Cloudflare found global internet traffic grew 17.2% in 2024), while it also marked surpassing 200,000 broadband subscribers in April 2024.

December’s average usage was also found to be 6.4% higher than November’s, which Zen said reflected the seasonal impact of longer nights and colder weather. Yet even summer saw significant increases, such as on 13th June, when Zen’s network usage exceeded 2023’s highest peak by 5.4%.

Similarly, Ofcom recently reported that the average monthly data usage is now 531GB (GigaBytes) per connection across “all technologies“, which rises to an average of 766GB when only looking at full-fibre connections. However, due to a change in the regulator’s methodology, we can’t compare this with the previous year’s results.

Finally, it’s worth remembering that broadband and mobile providers use sophisticated Content Delivery Networks (CDN) and systems to help manage the load from big online events, which caches popular content closer in the network to end-users (i.e. improves performance without adding network strain). This in turn lowers the provider’s impact on external links and helps to keep costs down. Demand for data is of course constantly rising and home broadband connections are forever getting faster, thus new peaks of usage are being set all the time by every ISP.

The Cumberland Council in England has praised the progress being made on local broadband upgrades in the rural region, which they say has so far helped to extend “superfast” (30Mbps+) networks to cover more than 95% of premises and “gigabit” (1000Mbps+) connectivity to 62%. But they also “anticipate” that gigabit cover will “exceed 99% of properties by 2026“.

Going from gigabit broadband coverage of 62% to 99%+ by 2026 would suggest quite a significant level of rapid build progress for such a rural county, although this is contingent upon over £400m of both commercial and publicly funded broadband deployment programmes being able to reach completion in a timely fashion. Such work is being undertaken by various fixed network providers, such as Openreach (BT), nexfibre (Virgin Media), Fibrus, B4RN and others.

Part of the above effort reflects the £108m (state aid) Project Gigabit broadband rollout contract (Lot 28) for Cumbria (here and here), which was awarded to Fibrus in November 2022 and aims to cover 60,000 hard-to-reach premises “by 2026“. But we should insert a caveat that, when it comes to politics and build targets, the word “by” often means “by the end of“, rather than “before the start of“.

By comparison, the UK government is seeking to achieve “nationwide” (c.99%) coverage of gigabit-capable broadband ISP networks by 2030.

Cllr Chris Southward, Digital Champion, said:

“A huge amount of progress has been made in improving digital connectivity across the Cumberland area and it is great to see so many businesses and residents now reaping the benefits this brings.”

This is an exciting time in terms of the work being carried out to further improve connectivity and I would encourage everyone to check if they can improve the service to their premise and experience for themselves the difference it can make”.

Cumbria certainly has cause for such optimism, particularly since independent data from Thinkbroadband does show that gigabit broadband coverage in Cumberland increased from 37.4% in January 2024 to 60.2% in December 2024. This reflects an increase of 22.8 percentage points within the space of a year (or a growth rate of 60.96%), which, if maintained over the next two years, would enable them to reach their target.

The risk to this is that network deployments tend to slow down significantly, while often also getting disproportionately more expensive, as they reach into increasingly remote and rural communities. Suffice to say that there’s always the prospect for both commercial and publicly funded deployments, particularly in today’s heavily strained market, to fall short (i.e. take longer to reach their targets). Getting to the 60-75% mark is usually the easy part.

ISPreview has today taken a quick look back across the UK’s market for mobile network operators in order to identify both the cheapest unlimited 4G and 5G data (broadband) plans and examine how their pricing has changed since our last survey two years ago. But some people may be surprised to find that most operators are still charging a similar amount.

In this article we’ll focus on the cheapest Pay Monthly SIM-Only plans with unlimited data, which is partly because the alternative dedicated Mobile Broadband plans that are still being offered by some operators have not kept pace with regular SIM plans and thus often get shunned (i.e. you can usually just put a normal mobile SIM into a mobile broadband router or turn your Smartphone into a WiFi Hotspot [Tethering] without much trouble).

The next thing to be mindful of is that there are four primary Mobile Network Operators (MNO) in the UK market – EE (BT), O2 (Virgin Media), Three UK and Vodafone (the latter two are merging, but that process will take a few years). Most of these also supply their services to a large base of smaller Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNO) that inherent some of their parent’s performance and coverage limitations.

However, MVNOs don’t always gain immediate access to the latest features from their parents (e.g. 5G Standalone, Wi-Fi Calling etc.), which will vary and depends on the agreements they’ve signed. Suffice to say, it’s wise not to assume that taking out a contract with an MVNO provider will result in an identical service or performance to that of the primary mobile operator to which it is associated.

Finally, most mobile operators tend to attach a Fair Usage Policy (FUP) to their “unlimited data” plans, which typically provides a guideline for how much maximum data usage is allowable per month. Some examples of these can be found below. In addition, all operators will heavily restrict roaming data usage (i.e. when outside the UK), but that’s another story; we’re not looking at roaming today.

Examples of UK FUPs for Unlimited Data Plans (Oct 2024)

➤ EE

“We will consider usage above 600GB/month to be non-personal use and have the right to apply traffic management controls to deprioritise your mobile traffic during busy periods or to move you to a business plan.”

➤ O2

“Where you regularly tether to 12 or more devices, have used 650GB of data twice within a 6 month period, or have connected to a device other than an eligible device as stipulated in clause 3.3 of these Terms, then we may investigate your usage further to ascertain whether your Unlimited Data usage is for the permitted use. Where following such investigation we determine or reasonably suspect that your usage is for purposes other than the permitted use then we reserve the right to transfer you to a more suitable plan.”

➤ Vodafone

“Where Vodafone notices a Customer’s data usage exceeds 600GB per month twice or more in a 6-month period, Vodafone may investigate whether your use of the Service is inconsistent with this policy. Following such an investigation, if we determine or reasonably suspect that your usage is for purposes other than the permitted use then Vodafone reserve the right to transfer you to a more suitable plan or take other action in line with this policy.”

Take note that Three UK doesn’t appear to impose a hard or soft data cap, while some MVNOs may set their guideline amounts (soft caps) lower than those listed above or take a different approach. For example, 1p Mobile say that “data consumption is subject to a personal usage cap of 500GB” and Lyca Mobile uses a figure of 450GB.

However, the FUPs around all this might talk tough, but they’re usually fairly soft (flexible) and rarely ever enforced. This is perhaps because actually enforcing them might breach the advertising watchdog’s guidelines on ‘unlimited’ terminology. But you should still make sure to read your operator’s FUP and Acceptable Usage Policies (AUP) in order to be sure of what you’re getting.

Cheapest Unlimited Mobile Data Plans 2024 vs 2022

Firstly, it’s very important to underline that inflation (CPI and RPI) surged between 2022 and early 2024, which means that any operator choosing to maintain the same price as it had in 2022 will have technically been giving customers a real-terms price reduction. But some operators approach this differently, such as by introducing options for longer contract terms / options than they had before (e.g. giffgaff’s 18-month and iD Mobile’s 24-month terms).

Overall, and excluding the new additions (e.g. Sky Mobile, Talkmobile, 1p Mobile), most of the operators appear to be holding at roughly the same price point as they were in 2022. Naturally, though, there are some exceptions to this, such as the price rises seen on UW and price fall seen via EE etc. We also have to remember that Smarty’s standard price is listed as £20, but the package is frequently available for around £15 to £16 on a discount for new customers (largely unchanged from 2022).

In addition, some other mobile operators, such as Vodafone, often impose some degree of broadband speed cap on their cheapest unlimited plans, which makes such comparisons harder to value (e.g. Vodafone’s £30 plan limits downloads to 10Mbps and if you want uncapped speeds then it’s £36). EE similarly limits their ‘Unlimited Essential’ plan to 100Mbps, but that’s still pretty good on mobile, so we won’t quibble.

Speaking of things that make comparisons difficult, there’s also the challenge of how you value some of the included extras. For example, O2’s plans often offer 3 months of free Disney+ (or another selected streaming service) and include free EU roaming with a 25GB fair usage limit for data), while others may not include these or might add a much stricter data cap for roaming.

One other point to make is that some unlimited data plans DO NOT include the cost of sending MMS (picture) messages, which are – somewhat bizarrely in this modern digital age – still ridiculously expensive (e.g. 65p on Three UK). Sadly, many operators still don’t make this clear when you sign-up, thus you might only find out once you get hit by it. But most people already know to use internet messaging services for pictures, which avoids this issue (the growing adoption of RCS messaging also avoids the MMS charge)

Finally, there remains a big question mark over how the recently agreed merger between Vodafone and Three UK will impact all of this, although we won’t be able to fully assess this for a few more years because consumer prices will initially receive some protection (here).

On 17th January 2025 Ofcom will begin enforcing a ban on mid-contract price hikes that are linked to inflation and percentage changes (here), but this doesn’t extend to many existing broadband contracts. Consumers on bigger ISPs may thus find themselves being divided between two different pricing policies, and one is going to hurt your wallet more than the other.

Just to recap. Over the past few years most of the major ISPs have adopted a policy that sees them increasing the price their customers pay, each year, by around 4% plus the rate of annual inflation (CPI or RPI) – as published in a particular month (usually January or February) and then introduced to bills in March or April. In 2022 this resulted in average annual price hikes of around 9% (here), before rising to 14% in 2023 (here) and falling back to 7-8% in early 2024 (here).

However, many consumers found the policy confusing (e.g. a lot of people are not familiar with how “inflation” actually works or the meaning of terms like CPI or RPI), which resulted in Ofcom deciding to ban the practice. But this was more about forcing broadband, phone, pay TV and mobile providers to be more transparent, rather than completely stopping mid-contract price hikes.

Instead, the regulator told providers that, wherever they apply in-contract price rises, they must now “set these out clearly and up-front, in pounds and pence, when a customer signs up“.

Old vs New Approach to Mid-Contract Price Rises (Ofcom)

Since then the industry has partly responded in much the same way as it always does, by waiting to see what approach BT took (here) and then copying it. BT’s response was to introduce a flat £3 per year increase on broadband and a £1.50 increase on mobile. Such a policy is clearer, but it doesn’t scale well (i.e. those on lower priced entry-level services will be hit harder) and is thus unlikely to damped calls for an outright ban on mid-contract hikes.

The other caveat in all this is that the change usually only impacts re-contracting and new customers who join after the new pricing policy has been introduced (although some O2 are pushing it on to existing customers too – here). Put another way, existing customers will often still be held to the old inflationary-linked policies, until they upgrade/re-contract or switch provider. But this begs the question – given the recent falls in inflation, which approach will hit your pocket the most? Let’s take a look.

Comparing the Impact

In order to run this quick and admittedly over-simplified comparison between the old and new pricing policies, ISPreview has opted to use an example monthly price of £30. The examples we’re using below will mostly reflect major ISPs (and some random picks) that have, at the time of writing, clearly set out what their approach to mid-contract price rises will be post-17th January 2025. Some other providers may not announce this until that date.

In addition, we’re going to take the latest inflation figures, as published in November 2024, to help us get as close as possible to how we expect the old pricing policy (if it were to be continued into 2025) would compare with the new ones if it were applied in 2025. The results for our example broadband package are as follows. Remember, most of these annual-price hike policies are usually applied to bills around March or April.

Impact of Old (2024) vs New (2025) Price Hike Policies
(Broadband Packages)

BT

Previous Policy: CPI of 2.3% + 3.9% = 6.2%

New Policy: £3 per month extra

Result: A package costing £30 per month would, from introduction, now cost £33 per month (new policy) vs £31.86 (old policy).

Vodafone

Previous Policy: CPI of 2.3% + 3.9% = 6.2%

New Policy: £3 per month extra

Result: A package costing £30 per month would, from introduction, now cost £33 per month (new policy) vs £31.86 (old policy). This is identical to BT.

TalkTalk

Previous Policy: CPI of 2.3% + 3.7% = 6%

New Policy: £3 per month extra

Result: A package costing £30 per month would, from introduction, now cost £33 per month (new policy) vs £31.80 (old policy).

Virgin Media

Previous Policy: RPI of 3.4% + 3.9% = 7.3%

New Policy: £3.50 per month extra

Result: A package costing £30 per month would, from introduction, now cost £33.50 per month (new policy) vs £32.19 (old policy).

Sky Broadband

Previous Policy: Sky doesn’t have a set policy and increased prices by an average of 6.7% in 2024, which was not directly CPI/RPI linked.

New Policy: We don’t currently know how they plan to handle future changes for either existing or new customers.

CommunityFibre

Previous Policy: CPI of 2.3% + 2.9% = 5.2%

New Policy: £2 per month extra

Result: A package costing £30 per month would, from introduction, now cost £32 per month (new policy) vs £31.56 (old policy).

Broadly speaking, the old policy, if it were to be maintained into 2025 (usually impacting existing customers), would result in an annual increase in rental prices of between 5.2% to 7.3% (£1.56 to £2.19) extra per month on a package costing £30 per month. By comparison the new policy, on the same £30 package, results in an annual increase of between £2 to £3.50 extra per month (between 6.25% to 10.45% extra).

Clearly, most broadband consumers (i.e. those using the biggest ISPs) are going to pay more this year under the new, and admittedly clearer, pricing policy than the old one. In addition, those on the cheapest packages will suffer an even more disproportionate hit. But in fairness, some providers, like CommunityFibre, have chosen a smaller c.£2 increase that sits closer to the older policy in terms of its impact.

The comparative impact of this will of course vary a little depending upon the final CPI/RPI figures, while the chosen £ increase under the new policy could be said to reflect each provider’s attempt to de-risk the uncertainty around future inflation values when setting their pricing (i.e. Ofcom’s pursuit of greater clarity has come at a cost). Providers may yet choose to set a different £ increase for 2026 and beyond, so the gap between pricing policies could change in the future.

Otherwise, it’s worth highlighting that not all communication providers play the mid-contract hikes game. A good number of ISPs, particularly smaller players and many alternative networks, often adopt much more static pricing that rarely changes or at least won’t change during your minimum contract term.

Finally, it’s worth remembering that broadband providers are NOT immune to cost increases. Providers, much like consumers, are also suffering under the burden of rising supplier and lease costs, surging inflation, high energy prices, as well as the cost of adding all sorts of new services (e.g. FTTP) and catering for new regulations etc.

Consumer who are hit by mid-contract hikes like this could alternatively try haggling for a lower price when the notification drops (Retentions – Tips for Cutting Your Broadband Bill), although your mileage may vary (big providers will be more receptive). Meanwhile, those on benefits (Universal Credit etc.) also have the option of taking a cheaper Social Tariff – see our Quick Guide to UK Social Tariffs.

In addition, Ofcom’s new One Touch Switching (OTS) system has also made it much quicker and easier to switch providers, but just make sure you aren’t going to be penalised by any early contract termination or exit fees before doing so (this should not be an issue if you’re already out of contract).

New customers looking to join broadband ISP Virgin Media (O2) should take note that they’ve today launched their Winter Sale, which significantly slashes some of their broadband and TV bundle prices. For example, Virgin’s top 2Gbps package has been reduced in price to just £55 per month on an 18-month minimum term.

The discounted broadband plans, which include a wireless router and free setup, generally start at £23.50 per month for a 132Mbps service (£54 after 18-months), before rising to £27 for 362Mbps (£66), £33 for 516Mbps (£72) and £39 for 1130Mbps (£78). A 2Gbps (200Mbps) tier also exists in nexfibre areas, which has been cut to just £55 (£84); people in nextfibre areas can also pay a bit more for symmetric speeds, if they so wish.

Virgin Media’s winter sale deals are available from today and will probably end in the not-too-distant future (no end date was specified, but these things tend to change every 1-3 weeks). The provider also has various discounts running on their TV and mobile (O2) bundles.

Mobile and broadband operator Sure recently confirmed that their roll-out of full fibre (FTTP) broadband on the English Channel Island of Guernsey had now reached 75% of premises (with take-up of 15,000 premises), which puts them on-track to complete the build phase by the end of 2025. Many customers are also being given free speed boosts as part of the upgrade.

Just to recap. Sure is working alongside the States of Guernsey on a joint £37.5m project (£12.5m of public investment) to build a new Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across the whole of Guernsey (30,000+ premises) by the end of 2026 (end of 2025 for build completion and 2026 for copper retirement). The previous update in May 2024 revealed that Sure had covered 18,000 premises (inc. 10,000 customers), which was up from 9,000 a year earlier (credits to the BBC News for the latest stats). Customers can order packages via Sure, JT and Airtel.

As part of this, Sure recently announced that thousands of their new and existing customers would also “enjoy significant speed increases this winter” when their fibre plans are upgraded “free of charge“. The upgrades, which will see some customers being boosted to speeds of up to 500Mbps, started this month and are due to be completed in January 2025.

For example, customers on Sure’s Basic Fibre will get a 50% speed uplift to 75Mbps, with those on Essential Fibre doubling their current 75Mbps speed to 150Mbps. Meanwhile, customers on Sure’s fastest Gigabit, Hyperfast and Hyperfast Plus packages will remain on their current speeds but will see a reduction in their monthly bill. Savings will be up to £34 per month, equating to £408 per year.

Mike Fawkner-Corbett, Acting Chief Commercial Officer at Sure, said:

“Our fibre network has been developed for amazing speeds, as the technology continues to advance it is crucial that we provide our customers with the best possible service. This upgrade demonstrates our commitment to ensuring that islanders have access to fast, reliable broadband that can meet their growing digital needs.

We want to enhance the customer experience – we’ve listened and know our customers want faster speeds, better value, and seamless WiFi everywhere in their home. That is why we are improving our plans and expanding what customers get when they sign up to fibre with Sure.”

Islanders currently considering a switch to Sure’s fibre or standard broadband packages will also receive their “hassle-free broadband offer” when they sign up or re-sign their contract:

➤ A free professional installation
➤ A free WiFi health-check with the Home Tech Team (valued at £45)
➤ A free router (valued at £108)
➤ A free mesh WiFi extender (valued at £72)

Once again, as we reach the end of 2024, it’s time for ISPreview to take our usual biannual look back to see how the broadband download and upload speeds have changed across the fastest nationally available UK fixed line ISPs, mobile network operators and Starlink (satellite) services. But this time around we’ve made a few changes.

The results in this report stem from consumer web-based speed testing and are thus inevitably impacted by a number of factors, such as the rising coverage of faster networks (e.g. full fibre and 5G) and the level of take-up by customers. Due to this it helps to understand any key changes in network deployments since the start of 2024 (Ofcom’s Connected Nations data).

In terms of fixed line broadband connectivity, the primary coverage improvements have continued to come from Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) networks (Summary of Full Fibre Build Progress), which is despite quite a few alternative operators suffering job losses and a slowdown in their builds due to ongoing market pressures (i.e. rising build costs, high interest rates, fierce competition etc.).

Full fibre networks are currently the sole driving force behind the rise in gigabit-capable coverage, which continues to be fuelled by commercial roll-outs in urban areas and has already passed the Government’s first target (85%) under their £5bn Project Gigabit programme (this mainly focuses on the final c.10-20% of harder to reach rural premises) – this is now aiming to hit “at least” 99% (“nationwide“) cover by 2030.

Finally, in terms of mobile networks, there have been some improvements in 4G and 5G (mobile broadband) coverage, but they remain quite small to modest. Nevertheless, the industry-led £1bn Shared Rural Network (SRN) project has made a little progress on boosting geographic 4G coverage and aims to cover 95% of the UK – from at least one operator – by the end of 2025. By comparison, 5G is primarily being driven by commercial builds.

Fastest Major Fixed Broadband ISPs (H2 vs H1 2024)

The data in this report has been gathered from Thinkbroadband’s independent speedtest database (inc. ISPreview’s Broadband Speedtest). The table only includes the largest and most established independent ISPs with strong national availability, but there is a separate table for smaller alternative networks on page 2 – these are difficult to include because they aren’t yet available to the majority of premises and don’t produce much test data (fewer users).

Naturally, there are caveats to consider with speedtest based studies like this, not least because the results tend to be more reflective of take-up than network availability. For example, some ISPs may have a much larger proportion of customers on slower copper-based (ADSL or FTTC) lines, which can weigh against anybody on faster FTTP packages with the same provider (i.e. pulling average speeds down). The opposite can also be true.

However, the big change this time is that we’ve switched from using a mathematical “mean” to a “median” average, which tends to be more reflective of real-world speeds. But this does mean that we lose connection to our historical trends data. All of the tables in this report are thus now using median values, including the previous H1 2024 results.

Average Download Speeds – Top 8

Average Upload Speeds – Top 8

Overall, the average download speed of the top national providers was 76.56Mbps (up from 70.95Mbps) and the average upload speed hit 15.88Mbps (up from 14.77Mbps).

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the launch of their new 2Gbps services and a symmetric speeds add-on during 2024, Virgin Media is the provider that saw some of the biggest improvements in both download and upload speeds this time around. But in a rare change, we also saw a similarly positive improvement from TalkTalk. On the flip side, Plusnet suffered an unexpected decline.

Satellites

We’ve also been keeping track of the results for SpaceX’s satellite based Starlink broadband service. Sadly, not enough data exists to include other satellite platforms or providers, but that may change in the future. Otherwise, Starlink’s download performance appears to have fallen during the last half of 2024 and it’s a similar story for their upload performance, but the declines are small to modest.

Now flick over to page 2 to see how the fastest full fibre alternative network (altnet) ISPs and mobile operators performed.

Once again we’re ending 2024 by taking a look back to see how the United Kingdom’s position, at least in terms of the top 50 fastest countries for both fixed broadband ISP and mobile (4G, 5G) data speeds, has changed since 2023. Overall, the UK fell from 51st to 53rd for mobile and jumped from 56th to 44th for fixed lines.

The following report was created by harnessing data from Ookla’s popular Speedtest.net service for benchmarking internet connections around the world, which admittedly does have its caveats. For example, the data can be impacted by other aspects of the connection (e.g. slow Wi-Fi, local network congestion, the performance of speedtest.net’s own servers and consumer package choice), but these issues are shared by all of the countries.

However, the main differentiator for speeds between countries tends to stem from the balance between network availability and the take-up of faster connection types. For example, countries with a high coverage of gigabit-capable broadband networks (FTTP, DOCSIS 3.1 – 4.0 etc.) or strong 5G mobile services (ideally with plenty of radio spectrum for them to harness) will naturally rank highest in the table.

In terms of the UK, we’ve seen a strong and continuous improvement in the availability of both faster fixed and mobile networks. For example, Ofcom recently revealed (here) that 1Gbps capable fixed gigabit broadband networks had reached 84% of premises (up from 78% last year), which falls to 69% when only looking at full fibre / FTTP lines (up from 57%).

As for 5G mobile, it is now available from at least one MNO (operator) in the vicinity of around 90-95% of UK premises (up from 85-93% last year) or 61-79% when looking at outside areas with availability from all operators combined.

Top 50 Fastest Countries for Broadband in 2024

The data below reveals that fixed line broadband and mobile speeds have continued to improve across the world. But despite some noted improvements in 5G coverage, other countries still seem able to improve their real-world mobile performance at a faster or similar pace. On the flip side, the UK has seen its first ranking improvement for fixed line performance in several years, which reflects the growing coverage and take-up of full fibre lines.

We’ve summarised some of the key changes below.

UK Fixed & Mobile Speeds vs The World (2024)

Otherwise, the following tables show how the countries compare, using only download speed as the key measure, across the top 50 countries.

Sadly, Ookla doesn’t make it easy to do the same table for uploads or latency.

Fastest 50 Countries for Fixed Broadband Speed (DL) in 2024

Fastest 50 Countries for Mobile Speed (DL) in 2024