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The UK government has posted a Project Gigabit modification for Openreach’s £61.3m (public subsidy) contract to extend the reach of their full fibre (FTTP) based gigabit broadband network across Essex and North East England. This increases the value by £610,393 to £61.92m and will now reach an additional 269 premises in remote rural areas (total target now 24,707 premises).

Just to remind. Project Gigabit’s contracts are not static and their scope, as well as committed levels of public funding, can change over time for a number of different reasons (informed by regular ‘Open Market Reviews’ of existing UK deployment plans). For example, commercial operators may expand or reduce their roll-out plans in the same region, which can reduce or grow the scope for public investment within those same contracted areas.

The contracted operator could also find the deployment to be more expensive, or possibly even cheaper, than previously envisaged. Such adjustments may occur due to changes in build costs and interest rates / inflation, as well as any unexpected obstacles to street works or greater efficiencies of build than planned or expected. Suffice to say, there can be various reasons why the contracted scope of related builds and the level of allocated public funding may change over time.

In this case, the government (DSIT) have merely stated that “additional scope” has been added to Openreach’s Type C (Call Off 5) roll-out contract (first awarded Jan 2025) for the hardest-to-reach parts of Essex and North East England, which means that the “awarded premises have increased (rescoped) by 269“. This has pushed the contract value higher by £610,393 (roughly £2.27k per premises added).

The areas covered by Type C (Cross-Regional) contracts typically reflect locations where no or no appropriate market interest had previously been expressed before to the Government’s Building Digital UK (BDUK) agency, or areas that have been descoped or terminated from a prior procurement (i.e. there was a lack of market interest in upgrading them). Such areas are often skipped due to being too expensive (difficult) for smaller suppliers to tackle.

Clearly, in this case, Openreach has identified an ability to reach more premises with their contracted roll-out than previously planned. We don’t currently know whether this represents the addition of a specific community (communities) or whether it’s just a broader increase found across multiple locations. The original roll-out map has yet to be updated for the Call Off 5 changes:

Openreach Call Off 5 Gigabit Broadband Rollout Map (Dec 2024)

The new service, once live, can be ordered via various ISPs, such as BT, Sky Broadband, TalkTalk, Vodafone and many more (Openreach FTTP ISP Choices) – it is not currently an automatic upgrade, although some providers have started to do free automatic upgrades as older copper-based services and lines are slowly withdrawn.

The roll-out phase of the above contract is set to take another 2-3 years, although the contract itself runs until 30th September 2037; this includes clawback provisions that may return some of the public money that has been invested to conduct the build.

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The UK Government has published their annual New Year Honours List for 2026, which this time saw Matt Agar, Strategy Director for the government’s Building Digital UK agency within DSIT, being named an “Officer of the Order of the British Empire” for “services to Digital Infrastructure and Broadband“.

The King’s New Year Honours list is said to recognise the achievements and public service of people across the UK, from all walks of life. Anyone can nominate someone for an honour, and nominees are then “checked by various government departments to make sure they’re suitable for an honour” (this may include checks by HMRC) and an honour’s committee will also review the nominations.

So far as we could see, Matt seems to be the only one from the broadband and mobile sector to receive an honour this year. In case anybody has forgotten, BDUK has responsibility for delivering gigabit broadband and better mobile connectivity across the nation (e.g. the £5bn Project Gigabit scheme) and Matt has long played a key role in helping to run it.

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Rochdale-based UK broadband ISP Zen Internet has this morning revealed that average network traffic across their service rose by 21% during 2025, with the highest peak of data usage being set on 11th November 2025 (22% above last year’s peak) – largely driven by live football streaming (this often dominated peak demand).

What distinguishes 2025 is not the existence of such peaks, but how frequently they now occur on top of sustained demand. Zen highlighted how 2025 saw a succession of new network highs with peak traffic up 3% on 2024’s highest peak in February, 9% in March, and 11.5% in April, before rising sharply again in the autumn.

As above, live sport streaming platforms continue to dominate peak demand, with Amazon (Prime Video) traffic showing significant spikes, reaching 85% above a normal average evening on 4th November – during a big football event (Liverpool vs Real Madrid). The UEFA Champions League fixtures in February, March, April, and November all coincided with new peak records, while the Lionesses’ Euros final on 27th July drove an 11% increase in total network traffic compared with the previous day.

Interestingly, video gaming and software releases were described as being “less frequent, short-term contributors” to traffic peaks in 2025. But when they occurred, they generated sharp, time-limited surges on Zen’s network. A surprise game release in April 2025 prompted a noticeable daytime and evening uplift, while beta tests and major updates later in the year also produced clear spikes.

Apple traffic stood out in September 2025, jumping 900%, consistent with a major operating system (iOS) rollout, highlighting how large-scale software distribution can briefly place significant additional demand on the network without altering the underlying baseline trend.

Zen also notes that major global news events were “less likely to create dramatic standalone spikes” than in previous years, suggesting that news consumption is now embedded within everyday internet use. However, select moments still drove measurable increases, such as the US Presidential inauguration in January and the death of Pope Francis in April, which coincided with higher-than-normal traffic to trusted public service platforms such as the BBC. But Zen provided no solid data to substantiate these statements.

John Lyons, Technology Director at Zen, said:

“What this year shows very clearly is that high demand is no longer confined to isolated moments, but is now underpinned by sustained growth. We’re seeing sustained growth in baseline usage alongside repeated record peaks, which requires us to work hard to stay ahead of our growing customer demands. As Zen turns 30, continuing to invest in capacity and resilience is critical to making sure customers experience a reliable service, particularly as demand keeps rising.”

In terms of how all this compares with the wider UK market. Ofcom recently reported that the average monthly data usage per fixed broadband connection is now 583GB (GigaBytes) across “all technologies” (up from 531GB last year), which rises to an average of 738GB for full-fibre connections (oddly this was actually down a bit from 766GB).

However, it’s worth remembering that internet 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. As a side note, Virgin Media and O2 recently reported that they saw an 8% rise in broadband usage (down from 8.1% in 2024) and an 18% rise in mobile traffic through the year (up from 9%) – driven by growing use of AI, live sports and major game releases.

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ISPreview has today published our final biannual study of the United Kingdom’s broadband download and upload speeds for 2025, which reveals how the performance of the fastest nationally available fixed line ISPs, mobile network operators and Starlink (satellite) services has changed since H1 (mid-year).

The results in this report stem from web-based speed testing by consumers 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. As a result it helps to understand any key changes in network deployments over the same sort of period, which is shown below using the latest Connected Nations 2025 data from Ofcom.

In terms of fixed lines, the primary coverage improvements have continued to come from full fibre broadband networks (Summary of UK FTTP Builds), although ongoing market pressures (high build costs, high interest rates, fierce competition etc.) are continuing to result in many alternative operators (altnets) suffering job losses and a slowdown in their deployments. But the Openreach, Netomnia and others have kept up a good pace.

Full fibre networks are now also the sole driving force behind the rise in gigabit-capable coverage, which continues to be predominantly fuelled by commercial roll-outs in urban areas. Speaking of which, gigabit coverage passed the Government’s first target (85%) under their £5bn Project Gigabit programme earlier this year (focused on the final c.10-20% of poorly served rural premises) and is now aiming to hit c.99% coverage by 2032 (delayed from the original 2030 target – here).

Finally, in terms of mobile networks, there have been further improvements in 4G and 5G (mobile broadband) coverage. Most of this stems from commercial investment, although the industry-led £1bn Shared Rural Network (SRN) project did make good progress on boosting geographic 4G coverage (here).

Fastest Major Fixed Broadband ISPs (H2 vs H1 2025)

The data in this report has been gathered from Thinkbroadband’s independent database of speedtests (inc. ISPreview’s Broadband Speedtest). But the table below only includes the largest and most established independent ISPs with strong national availability, although there is a separate table for smaller providers (inc. some altnets) on page 2 – these are difficult to include because such providers 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 lines (ADSL or FTTC), which can weigh against those on faster FTTP services with the same provider (i.e. pulling average speeds down). The opposite can also be true.

Average Download Speeds – Top 8

Average Upload Speeds – Top 8

Overall, the average download speed of the top national providers was 91.28Mbps (up from 90.12Mbps) and the average upload speed hit 21.21Mbps (down from 21.61Mbps), which suggests that very little changed across the major national providers over the last half of the year. But we did see a curiously large performance slide at EE and the reverse at Vodafone.

Now flick over to page 2 to continue this summary and see how the fastest satellite (starlink), mobile operators and smaller ISPs all performed.

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New customers looking to join Virgin Media (O2) may like to know that they’ve kicked off their Winter Sale today, which will run until 4th February 2026 and offers a variety of discounts across their various broadband packages, TV bundles (these all include Netflix Standard) and triple-play deals with O2’s mobile SIMs.

The new deals aren’t all that different from what we saw around the Black Friday period, although there are a few notable ones. For example, their 2Gbps package (nexfibre areas) has now been reduced in price to just £49.99 per month on a 24-month term with free installation, although it does increase to £53.99 from April 2026 and then £57.99 from April 2027.

However, the sale announcement does talk a lot about “Netflix Standard” being included with their TV bundles (as well as their 500Mbps and 1Gbps broadband-only packages), although it’s important to be clear that this is “Standard with Ads” (normally £5.99) and not the regular “Standard” (£12.99) plan that’s being bundled.

Customers with an O2 mobile account who add Virgin Media’s broadband to their household services can also enjoy Volt rewards, such as Double mobile data on all eligible O2 mobile Plans, a broadband speed boost (usually double speeds) and their WiFi guarantee (i.e. minimum download speeds of 30Mbps in every room or £100 credit back). Check out Virgin Media’s site for all the new offers.

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Alternative network operator and broadband ISP CommunityFibre, which has invested c.£1bn to deploy a 5Gbps speed full fibre (FTTP) network across 1.342 million UK homes (inc. 185k businesses within 200 metres of their network) – mostly in London, has just removed all of their mid-contract price hikes for new customers.

The provider had previously adopted a pricing policy that increased the monthly price that customers pay for their package by £2 each April. But from today that policy has been removed from all of their packages for new customers, and they’re instead now offering a “price lock“, which should remain available to take until 2nd February 2026.

Prices now start at a flat £19 per month for their 100Mbps (symmetric) speed tier with an included router and free installation on a 24-month minimum term (shorter terms also exist, albeit at extra cost), which rises to £63 per month for their top 5Gbps (5,000Mbps) package; the latter is a premium tier that adds a WiFi 7 router, “guaranteed” whole home wireless coverage, bespoke engineer setup and priority support.

Take note that a basic ‘Essential‘ plan also exists for those on lower incomes (although technically anybody can take it), which costs £12.50 per month on a 12-month term for symmetric speeds of 35Mbps and a very basic WiFi 5 router.

The only thing to be aware of is that, at the end of your contract (applicable to all contracts), the monthly price will still increase by £4 versus your last month (post-contract change rather than mid-contract). But otherwise, it’s nice to see a provider at this scale moving away from mid-contract hikes, even if it might not last. Sadly, existing customers won’t benefit from the change.

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Residents of the 100-home Amberwood estate in Carlisle (Cumbria, England), which was originally built by Persimmon Homes and thus served by a single full fibre (FTTP) network from FibreNest (recently acquired by OFNL), have expressed frustration after another protracted broadband outage hit the area – allegedly the latest in a long list of disruptions over the past 6 years.

The latest outage is said to have disrupted internet connectivity for three long days earlier this month, which FibreNest attributed to being caused by “malicious damage to infrastructure owned by its network partner, Virgin Media” (likely a reference to a core fibre link that feeds data capacity to the development).

However, residents told the local News & Star that the latest outage is part of a long-running pattern of unreliable service stretching back more than six years, with complaints highlighting a lack of support from the ISP and the need to spend extra money on 4G/5G based mobile broadband as a backup due to local connectivity being deemed unreliable.

“This isn’t a one-off – it’s happening all the time, with days of no internet,” said estate resident Melanie MacPake. Complaints like this have cropped up on other estates where FibreNest / OFNL are present (example) and tend to be exasperated by the fact that the operator is often the only gigabit-capable broadband network present, which in this case stems from the fact that FibreNest used to be part of Persimmon and thus held some degree of exclusivity over the estate.

FibreNest’s dominance of such estates often makes it challenging for rival networks to enter (residents in other areas have previously described this as being similar to a mini “monopoly“). Persimmon Homes did respond to this criticism in 2021 by launching a wholesale product (FibreNest Wholesale) that rival ISPs could harness (here), but this has thus far not been attractive enough to entice any other providers.

The new owner of FibreNest, BUUK Infrastructure (GTC, OFNL – Open Fibre Networks Limited), has said that it plans to introduce customer choice across FibreNest-served developments in 2026. But this is currently only likely to reflect an expanded choice of retail ISPs, albeit via the same underlying network infrastructure (i.e. the ISPs on OFNL’s platform), and should thus not be confused with real competitive infrastructure layer choice. This may also not be enough to address the unreliability of the existing infrastructure.

A spokesperson for FibreNest added that it “strives to deliver the best possible experience for its customers” and “continuously reviews all aspects of its service“. But it’s currently unclear whether they plan to make any changes that might improve the resilience of their underlying network on the estate.

At present situations like this rarely catch the eye of the government and thus wider debate, since they exist at a fairly small scale relative to the wider UK broadband market. But it’s possible that may change as the national deployment of full fibre lines slowly reaches its target of near universal (c.99%) coverage by 2032. This could potentially shift some of the focus back toward resolving infrastructure competition in such niche areas. But hope is not a strategy.

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The past couple of years have been awash with news and predictions about rising consolidation within the UK’s market for alternative fixed broadband networks (altnets). But keeping track of so many developments can be difficult, so ISPreview has decided to start a new tracker, which monitors related announcements since 2020 onwards.

Most altnets across the market are currently looking at consolidation as a way of balancing against the difficult market conditions that have arisen over the past few years. Much of this has been driven by high interest rates, rising build costs and strong competition (i.e. overbuild and the impact on customer take-up) – all of which is making it hard to raise fresh investment and expand networks.

However, it’s easy to overlook that this squeeze has already resulted in quite a few sizeable consolidation agreements taking place, and many industry observers expect the current crop of c.80 altnets to shrink down into a market dominated by just a handful (or less) of players over the coming years. Suffice to say that we’ve been keeping track of this for a while and thought readers might benefit if we shared our data.

Take note that the table below is purely focused on infrastructure providers – typically those that have been building full fibre networks for consumers to use – and not retail ISPs, although some of the below agreements do include vertically integrated retail ISPs (we’ll mention those where relevant). The list excludes business providers that only offer traditional Ethernet (leased line) services, as they’re somewhat of a different animal and usually focused on site-specific connectivity, rather than wide area coverage of both homes and businesses.

Altnet UK Fibre Consolidation Tracker (Jan 2020 – Dec 2025)

We will add more consolidation agreements to this list as they occur.

Total Agreements by Year

• 2020: 1
• 2021: 3
• 2022: 0
• 2023: 5
• 2024: 4
• 2025: 6
• 2026: ? (in progress)

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ISPreview is today ending 2025 by taking our annual look back to see how the United Kingdom’s position, in terms of the top 50 fastest countries for fixed broadband and mobile speeds (4G, 5G), has changed since 2024. Overall, the UK’s global rank for mobile speed is now 59th (down from 53rd last year), while our ranking for fixed broadband is 44th (unchanged).

The following report was created by harnessing data from Ookla’s popular Speedtest.net database 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 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 technologies (FTTP, DOCSIS 3.1+) 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 1000Mbps (gigabit) capable fixed broadband ISP networks had reached 87% of premises (up from 84% last year), which falls to 78% when only looking at full fibre FTTP lines (up from 69%).

As for 5G mobile, it is now available from at least one MNO (operator) in the vicinity of around 94-97% of UK premises (up from 90-95% last year) or 64-89% when looking at outside areas with availability from all operators combined (up from 61-79%).

UK Broadband and Mobile Stats vs the World – 2025

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 continued growth in the coverage and take-up of full fibre lines, despite a build slowdown among smaller alternative networks.

We’ve summarised some of the key changes below.

UK Fixed & Mobile Speeds vs The World (2025)

In addition, it’s worth noting that only two of the UK’s cities appear in Ookla’s list of the top fastest cities in the world. For example, for mobile connections, Manchester delivered the fastest average download speed of 113.67Mbps, but it was only ranked 72nd. After that comes London on 78th, which delivered speeds of 103.36Mbps.

In terms of fixed line connections, Manchester, which ranked 60th in this table, once again came top with a speed of 156.03Mbps and they were followed by London in 65th place and a speed of 144.82Mbps.

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 2025

Fastest 50 Countries for Mobile Speed (DL) in 2025

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The Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) has sent a warning message (via email and text) to over 1,000 broadband internet users in the UK that have been identified as using “illegal TV streaming services“, which calls on them to “immediately cease using illegal TV streaming services or face the risk of prosecution“.

“People who access illegal TV streaming services are potentially liable to prosecution for criminal offences, including under Section 11 of the Fraud Act 2006. FACT’s latest campaign warns end users that they are not anonymous and that watching unauthorised content carries serious risks,” states the new announcement.

The latest campaign comes shortly after a recent high-profile case involving Jonathan Edge, from Liverpool, who was jailed for his role in running and personally using an illegal streaming service. Edge was sentenced to three years and four months in prison, in a prosecution supported by FACT and Merseyside Police.

Crucially, Edge’s own use of the unauthorised service was “treated as a distinct crime“, leading to a separate concurrent sentence of two years and three months, “highlighting that end users, not just suppliers, can face criminal prosecution for illegal streaming“.

Detective Sergeant Adam Dagnall, Merseyside Police’s Cybercrime Unit, said:

“Merseyside Police takes illegal streaming seriously because it often helps fund organised crime and puts users at real risk. Not only is it a criminal offence, but the unauthorised streaming services frequently contain malware that can compromise personal devices and lead to the loss of information such as banking details, or be used to commit identity fraud.

Legitimate providers have security measures that protect users from these threats. Please don’t be tempted by cheap so-called ‘fully loaded’ or ‘jailbroken’ devices, even as Christmas gifts – you could end up getting more than you bargained for.”

However, it’s worth noting that Edge’s case was rather at the extreme end of things, which in reality means that casual viewing is more likely to be treated like a civil offence (unless you’re also assisting in the distribution of copyright content). The cost and complexity of successfully prosecuting casual viewing usually means that rights holders will adopt other methods, such as warnings and demands for settlement, where viable (e.g. the difficulty of identifying the person who actually committed the offence on a shared internet connection and or whether it was a brief accidental or full viewing).

The example case used above is also much more clear-cut than the casual viewing of a dodgy stream via a random copyright infringing website. This is because the c.1,000 people being contacted reflect those who had purchased access to so-called “loaded” Firesticks, Android, or Kodi devices from Edge. The details were uncovered as part of the police’s investigation into Edge’s operation. Most such viewing on dodgy streaming websites, which rarely keep logs, doesn’t provide such clear and linkable evidence. Lest we forget all the usual challenges from those using proxy servers, VPNs and other methods to mask their activity.