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Alternative broadband ISP Quickline, which is building a new gigabit-capable full fibre (FTTP) and fixed wireless (FWA) broadband network across rural parts of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire in England (3-Year Rollout Plan), has today announced that as part of their roll-out they’ve now connected 50 community hubs (QHubs) to their new network.

The latest to open its doors is Scotton Digital Hub, officially launched last week alongside residents, community volunteers and David Skaith, Mayor of York and North Yorkshire. The hub is one of dozens of rural venues including village halls, community centres and warm spaces, now benefiting from a free Quickline connection as part of the company’s social value programme.

Quickline is currently aiming to extend gigabit-capable broadband to a further 360,000 UK premises across thousands of rural communities (roughly 170k via publicly funded projects and almost 200k from commercial builds) and the provider hopes to end 2025 with a total of 200,000 premises passed. Suffice to say that more QHub’s will follow as they expand their reach into new communities.

Amelia Williamson, Social Values Executive at Quickline, said:

“Reaching 50 free hub connections is a great achievement and reflects our long-term commitment to bridging the digital divide. Each digital hub offers a safe, welcoming space where people can build confidence and develop essential digital skills.”

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Some of Starlink’s (SpaceX) customers with first generation broadband routers (UTR-201) – the ones with a dual-tone prism-like design – have recently started to be notified that their kit will soon become obsolete. But don’t worry if you’re one of the smaller portion of consumers with such hardware, because they’ll send you a free replacement.

The kit in question first shipped back in 2020 to early adopters and came alongside the provider’s old round shaped dish/terminals, although Starlink phased this hardware out roughly a year later (this occurred at around the same time as they transitioned to a flat-dish design).

However, the company has now begun to inform customers (credits to PC Mag) that software updates for the Gen 1 router “will be discontinued in the near future,” as part of the company’s “ongoing upgrades for security, performance, and reliability.” The support page for this suggests they first began notifying customers about the issue last month and now seem to be ramping-up that effort.

The good news is that those being impacted by the change will be sent a free replacement Starlink Router Mini. Customers do NOT need to return their old GEN1 router either and it will continue to function. But if you choose to keep using it then Starlink warns that “without future updates, we cannot guarantee long-term security, performance, or reliability. We strongly recommend upgrading to the Router Mini for the best experience.”

At present only those who have received the email can click the “Claim Free Router” button it includes to start the process, although we hope they provide another way for customers to receive it as email isn’t always reliable. So far as we can tell this seems to be happening in phases, so if you have the GEN1 kit and haven’t been contacted yet then it might be worth waiting another month or so before raising it with support.

Starlink currently has around 9,400 satellites in Low Earth Orbit (c.5,900 are v2 / V2 Mini) – mostly at altitudes of c.500-600km. Residential customers in the UK usually pay from £55 a month, plus £299 for hardware (currently free for many areas) on the ‘Residential Lite’ unlimited data plan (kit price may vary due to different offers) directly from Starlink, which promises downloads of up to 250Mbps (175Mbps average) and uploads of c.15-35Mbps. Faster packages exist at greater cost and cheaper, albeit more restrictive (data capped), options also exist for roaming users (e.g. £50 per month for 50 GigaBytes of data).

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The Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of broadband and mobile provider Virgin Media and O2 (VMO2), Jeanie York, has today confirmed that they’re “set to complete” their switch-off of the old legacy 3G mobile network “in the coming weeks” – largely as planned (although a few areas will still have 3G signals into “early 2026“).

The process, which was originally due to reach UK completion by the end of 2025, will free up radio spectrum so it can be used to further improve the coverage and mobile broadband speeds of their latest 4G and 5G networks. As part of this, O2 often upgrades masts in related locations ahead of the switch-off. The switch-off will also reduce the operators’ costs and power consumption.

“Our 3G network has already been withdrawn across many UK locations, with the final areas set to follow shortly. You may still see a 3G signal in some places for a short period in early 2026, but the network will soon be switched off entirely, so I’d like to take this opportunity to urge anybody who is still using a 3G-only handset to please visit your local store, or call us, to upgrade as soon as possible,” said Jeanie.

The operator is not yet switching off their 2G network, thus the few customers who had 3G before but still can’t get 4G or 5G today will still be able to make calls and send texts, although they will lose data (mobile broadband) connectivity until further upgrades are deployed. O2 did however start to shift customers away from 2G this year too, but they and other mobile operators won’t be able to completely withdraw it for several years (here).

Jeanie York said:

“We know that the majority of our customers, and those of giffgaff, Tesco Mobile and Sky Mobile which use our network, already have a 4G or 5G device and don’t have to take any action as a result of 3G being withdrawn. Our number one priority, however, is supporting those customers who do need to upgrade to a compatible advice. That’s why we’ve been writing directly to all of these customers, offering heavy discounts on replacement phones and entirely free upgrades for those we know are vulnerable. Many have already taken advantage of these offers and are now benefitting from easy-to-use devices they can count on for years to come.

…

When you do upgrade, you’ll be joining the millions of other O2 customers benefitting from our Mobile Transformation Plan, which will see us invest £700m into our mobile network this year alone – equivalent to £2m every day – to provide faster, more reliable services.

Whether it’s through recent network upgrades we’ve carried out at major venues like the Allianz Stadium, Wembley and Stadium of Light, upgrading coverage on major roads and motorways and in coastal areas, or deploying dozens of small cells to improve connectivity in the busiest city centres and tourist destinations, our investment in 4G and 5G networks is powering the moments that matter to our customers.

Just like 3G once did – only now faster, more reliably and more efficiently.”

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The UK telecoms regulator has today published the results of their Telecoms Access Review 2026 (TAR) for the Hull-area of East Yorkshire, which sets out how they intend to promote competition and investment in gigabit broadband (inc. business connectivity) across an area of c.198,000 premises that was previously totally dominated by KCOM’s network.

Ofcom typically conducts a single holistic review of the markets for both Business Connectivity (i.e. Leased Lines / Ethernet and Dark Fibre etc.), and the more residential focused Wholesale Local Access sector (i.e. broadband products like FTTP and FTTC etc.), every 5 years. In fact, they’ve already published their initial proposals for the rest of the UK (here), but Hull has always been a bit different.

At the last review, back in 2021 (here), the Macquarie-backed KCOM was still deemed to hold Significant Market Power (SMP) in the Hull area and its full fibre (FTTP) lines had already covered the vast majority of local premises. The operator has since expanded their fibre into other parts of East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire (England) – covering a total of 305,000 premises – but Ofcom’s review only focuses upon their SMP patch in Hull.

However, Hull in 2025 is not the same as it was in 2021, which is because in that time three rival alternative networks (see above) have now built their own FTTP networks across most of the city (Grain only covers a smaller patch) and have thus significantly weakened KCOM’s grip. At the same time, KCOM has been busy shifting customers off their old copper-based services (analogue phone, ADSL etc.) and on to fibre, which will shortly be followed by the full retirement of their copper line network.

The Issue of Infrastructure Sharing

Suffice to say that Ofcom’s new review has to address all this change, which would normally suggest a need to soften KCOM’s regulation in certain areas. One difficulty is that last year also saw a significant level of local protest erupt over the issue of infrastructure sharing in the city, which was fuelled by MS3 and Connexin’s deployment of 9m high wood poles – something that many people find unattractive (KCOM’s existing network is all underground). On the flip side, network operators see poles as a quick and cost-effective way of breaking into a market that has long been dominated by a single operator.

The law does require KCOM to fairly share access to their existing cable ducts in Hull (ATI Regulations). But rival operators expecting the same level of access, flexibility and affordability as the regulated solution (PIA) from Openreach have often run into problems with KCOM’s confidential commercial terms, which up until recently were allegedly placing an unfeasibly high price on access. The process to harness this is also still quite manual (laborious).

However, after coming under a lot of community and political pressures, KCOM eventually reached an agreement with Connexin and MS3 to co-develop a new pathway to accessing their existing ducts to run new fibre (i.e. limiting the need for new poles). Initial trials of this did take place, and the project is in its infancy, although the effort has now been somewhat impacted by wider financial / market pressures that have separately limited the ability of MS3 and Connexin to expand.

Similarly, KCOM confirmed to ISPreview in November 2024 that, due to the changing economic climate (i.e. high interest rates and an inability to attract fresh funding), they too had “paused” wider network expansion activity to focus on growth (greater commercialisation) within their existing footprint (here).

In short, Hull is a market that has reached an interesting stage of mature and competitive development, albeit with competitive network expansion progress having largely stalled across the board in recent months. Until today, this made it difficult to know quite how Ofcom might adjust their regulation to reflect all of this, but now we know. The phrase too little, too late comes to mind.

Ofcom’s proposals

The regulator’s review finds that, despite some strong progress from rival altnets, “network competition is not yet established and altnets face challenges in winning customers given KCOM’s incumbency advantages“. Between 71-80% of all premises in the Hull Area currently still purchase a fixed broadband connection connected to KCOM’s network. Also, although many areas now have a choice of one or more network providers, around 21%-30% of premises still have no alternative to KCOM.

In short, Ofcom states that competition within Hull still “needs to become more embedded and sustainable” to deliver long term benefits to consumers. The rules they’re proposing today will thus “continue to regulate in a way that encourages and supports competition and investment“.

KCOM will thus be expected to improve access to its network ducts and poles for running new fibre (as above, this arrives a little too late to help much), although they’ll no longer be expected to provide access to Dark Fibre (i.e. enabling rivals to install their own equipment at either end of the KCOM’s unlit fibre within cable ducts). But the latter will be subject to a 5-year transition.

Ofcom’s Proposed Changes for Hull and KCOM

We propose to find that KCOM has significant market power in the wholesale local access and leased line access markets in the Hull Area.

We are proposing a set of remedies to address the competition concerns that arise as a result.

We propose to:

➤ Improve access to KCOM’s telegraph poles and underground ducts:

A key element of our proposed approach to promoting network competition is to require KCOM to give other providers access to its duct and pole infrastructure. As in the rest of the UK, we propose to introduce a specific network access remedy to provide altnets with more certainty. We also propose that rental charges should be benchmarked against Openreach’s rental charges, and any costs associated with making the infrastructure usable will be recovered from all users of the infrastructure (subject to a financial limit). To ensure a level playing field between KCOM and other network operators, we propose that KCOM be subject to a no undue discrimination obligation and provides transparency over its compliance.

➤ Maintain access to existing wholesale services in both the wholesale local access and leased line access markets:

This includes a requirement on KCOM to provide an Ethernet service for the leased line access market, and to provide a wholesale local access service to meet its proposed general network access obligations. All wholesale services should continue to be provided on fair and reasonable terms with no undue discrimination.

➤ Remove the specific obligation on KCOM to provide dark fibre access: 

As a result of increased network competition and the potential for this to develop further, we propose to remove the specific requirement for KCOM to provide access to its leased line access services using the dark fibre element of a leased line. We also propose a five-year transition period for any existing dark fibre purchased from KCOM.

Breaking news.. more to follow..

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Network provider PlatformX Communications (PXC), which is a trading name of UK internet provider TalkTalk and sells wholesale solutions to ISPs (inc. other network providers), has today announced that they’ve made CityFibre’s Business Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband services available to all their partners.

The launch brings PXC’s partners an even greater choice of business connectivity solutions, offering symmetrical bandwidth of up to 1Gbps, with both Layer 3 Managed and Layer 2 Wholesale options available. VoIP overlay is supported on managed services, and API integration “ensures efficient order placement and lifecycle management“. 

However, it would be nice to see CityFibre and its partners offering speeds beyond 1Gbps via such business wholesale connections, particularly since their consumer connectivity can already deliver speeds of up to 5.5Gbps.

Jenny Harrison, Chief Commercial Officer of PXC, said:

“We’re thrilled to further expand our partnership with CityFibre to deliver next-generation business connectivity solutions to our partners and their customers. This collaboration ensures that our partners can access even more choice to better meet the needs of today’s businesses with reliable, high-speed broadband,”

George Wareing, Chief Commercial Officer at CityFibre, said:

“CityFibre’s 10Gb XGS-PON full fibre network gives our partners the ability to deliver gigabit capable speeds, with market-leading service performance. XGS-PON is the technology that will enable small and medium sized businesses to unlock their digital potential and it’s great to see PXC expanding its portfolio, bringing more choice and value to partners and businesses across the UK.”

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Alternative internet provider Airband, which has built a mix of both Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) and Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) based broadband networks to cover various rural parts of Wales and South West England, has today announced that they’ve hit their target of reaching 30,000 customers (up from 19,000 in March 2024).

The brand’s 30,000th customer was connected in Wrexham, North Wales, which was one of the first areas to benefit from the rollout of Airband’s latest Gigabit Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) technology (this uses the 60GHz band). Speaking of which, the provider said they’re “already planning” to expand the reach of this new FWA technology during 2026.

The provider has previously stated that their network spans a total of “more than 440,000 premises in over 200 communities across 7 counties“ (here), which we were told breaks down as being 175,000 premises via “fibre” (FTTP) and 265,000 premises via wireless (FWA) – all Ready for Service. But they’ve also recently expanded FTTP into off-net areas by partnering with Openreach (here).

Airband now serves rural parts of Devon, Herefordshire, Shropshire, Worcestershire and north Wales and has most recently brought FTTP solutions to the village of Ewelme in Oxfordshire.

Kash Rahman, Airband CEO, said:

“This customer milestone is another proud moment, in what has been a great year for Airband. Our focus on innovating to serve country communities that have been left behind by traditional broadband rollouts is working both for the business and the audiences we serve. We are committed to being customer first and the best is yet to come!”

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Internet connection testing firm Opensignal has today published their 2025 Fixed Broadband Experience report, which gauges the performance of major ISPs across the UK including BT (inc. EE), Sky Broadband, TalkTalk, Three UK, Virgin Media and Vodafone. Overall, Virgin Media scored wins in every single national connectivity category.

Just for context. Opensignal leverages crowdsourced data collected via end-users on their benchmarking app and services. Due to this there are some caveats to consider because such testing can be impacted by a lot of variable factors, such as poor home wiring (on ADSL and FTTC lines), the end-user’s choice of package (e.g. 1Gbps could be available, but people may pick a slower / cheaper tier), local network congestion and slow home WiFi etc.

However, despite being focused on “fixed broadband“, the report also includes results from Three UK’s mobile broadband service, which makes for an interesting comparison but does muddy the traditional definition of “fixed“ services. The report also includes some limited data for “prominent regional altnet full-fibre challengers CommunityFibre, Hyperoptic, brsk and Plusnet“, although the latter has never been an alternative network (it should have been included alongside BT).

Otherwise, the report attempts to categorise its results by several different measurements of user experience: Consistent Quality, Download Speed, Upload Speed, Video Experience and Reliability Experience. But needless to say that Virgin Media was named the winner for 2025 across all of these categories, and they lead by a particularly wide margin in areas such as Download Speed (187.8Mbps) and Reliability Experience (747 points). We’ve summarised some of the key results below.

Consistent Quality Score out of 100 (2024 Result in Brackets)

1. Virgin Media 81.6 (down from 90.4)
2. Vodafone 78.7 (down from 88.4)
3. BT + EE 74.6 (down from BT 86.6 – EE 83.1 )
4. TalkTalk 72.8 (down from 82.6)
5. Sky Broadband 70.7 (down from 76.9)
6. Three UK 62.6 (down from 72.3)

Average Download Speeds

1. Virgin Media 187.7Mbps (up from 157.4Mbps)
2. Vodafone 105Mbps (up from 77.5Mbps)
3. BT + EE 75.3Mbps (up from BT 62.0Mbps – EE 45.9Mbps)
4. Sky Broadband 70.4Mbps (up from 52.5Mbps)
5. Three UK 63.2Mbps (up from 54.8Mbps)
6. TalkTalk 55.1Mbps (up from 48.8Mbps)

Average Upload Speeds

1. Virgin Media 36.5Mbps
2. Vodafone 34.3Mbps
3. BT + EE 24.9Mbps
4. Sky Broadband 20Mbps
5. TalkTalk 19Mbps
6. Three UK 15.7Mbps

Clearly at this point it helps that Virgin Media has nearly all of their customer base on 100Mbps+ or faster broadband lines and in urban areas. On the flip side, providers with a much more varied mix of slower (e.g. ADSL, FTTC) and faster (e.g. FTTP) broadband technologies, particularly those with many users on those slower lines, are going to be at a disadvantage. But such is the way of things.

Despite this, it’s worth noting that Vodafone seem to now be the main national challenger for performance behind Virgin Media, which reflects the fact that they’re now much more FTTP focused than in the past and have key supplier agreements with Openreach, CityFibre and CommunityFibre.

The full results also include data from ten of the UK’s largest cities, which is where a number of alternative networks start to get mentioned. For example, in London, CommunityFibre tops the table with a download speed of 208.7Mbps and an upload speed of 164Mbps. But you’ll need to read the full report to get all the details.

London – Download Speeds (Mbps)
1. Community Fibre 208.7
2. Virgin Media 167.0
3. Hyperoptic 164.3
4. Three UK 78.9
5. Vodafone 72.5
6. BT (inc. EE) 64.7
7. Sky Broadband 57.7
8. TalkTalk 44.3

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A new report has claimed that broadband and mobile giant Virgin Media and O2 (VMO2) are reportedly in the process of reaching a new agreement with India’s Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), which is allegedly said to be worth around £750m over 10-years. The move could see the telecoms provider outsourcing some of their IT, such as in application management and infrastructure services.

According to the report on Telco Titans (paywall), the as yet unconfirmed move is being done at the direction of co-owners Telefónica, which recently set out a new five-year strategic plan (here). The latter included a desire to modernise IT systems and processes “externally“, which is where Tata could come into play. But a portion of the deal for VMO2 is also said to include ‘new work‘ for the business.

At present there are a lot of unknowns about all this and what the new agreement, if it is indeed signed, will deliver. The report indicates that a formal announcement of the deal is expected in the coming weeks (early New Year). VMO2 declined to comment when ISPreview asked, although O2 did inform us that it had no plans to move IT jobs from the UK to India or any other country, and that any such speculation would be unsubstantiated and misleading.

We should point out that VMO2 already work with TCS as part of an enterprise software integration contract, which was announced back in 2023. The UK is TCS’s second-largest market after the USA and they’re currently in the process of expanding their UK based workforce to create 5,000 new jobs, although the timeframe for this seems to be unclear.

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The North Lanarkshire Council (NLC) in Scotland has announced that they intend top roll-out “ultrafast broadband” connectivity across “all social housing” within the local authority (council documents suggest the goal is for speeds of 1Gbps), which is aimed at closing the authority’s digital divide, while improving access to knowledge, skills and jobs.

At present, the NLC is currently in the process of running a procurement to find a supplier (network operator) willing to deliver the new network. Once chosen, the supplier will be expected to complete the roll-out of a new “fully affordable, ultrafast, secure and reliable internet service” within around 5-7 years.

A number of pilot deployments are also expected to take place at several sites before the main roll-out begins. Nearly 2,000 initial properties will be chosen for this, reflecting the full spectrum of housing – including a high-rise tower block; temporary accommodation units; retirement complexes; a rural village and new build developments.

“We’ve also included homes located within the most deprived areas to ensure the initiative addresses inequalities and supports those who may benefit most from innovation. As part of the test of change initiative, nearly 400 of the 2000 will form a focused pilot for tech-enabled homes. These pilot sites will be equipped with smart home technologies tailored to tenant needs, enabling early evaluation of digital solutions in real life settings,” added the announcement.

Jim Logue, North Lanarkshire Council Leader, said:

“This project demonstrates that North Lanarkshire is leading the way to close the digital gap to level the playing field across economic, educational, and healthcare sectors, as well as social inequality.

“Our project will have far reaching benefits, offering increased choice and control over how tenants interact with key services. Benefits range from people being supported to live independently and having greater control over their care, to the use of SMART technology which measures temperature, CO2 levels and humidity, optimising heating and providing alerts to faults. It also helps improve customer service and experience by enabling seamless end-to-end processes to fulfil service requests.

“The effects of this programme will be felt for generations to come, improving access to increase opportunities and reduce inequalities allowing people to reach their full potential and prosper.”

The Scottish Household Survey (SHS) recently estimated that 10% of households in North Lanarkshire “do not have internet access” and furthermore, 15% of social rented tenants are the least likely across all tenures. The survey suggests that there is a correlation between digital exclusion and areas of deprivation, with households in the most deprived areas experiencing a greater rate of digital exclusion than those in less deprived areas.

At present there appear to be no solid details on how much funding, if any, will be involved in the contract and naturally the timetable for any roll-out will depend upon who they pick to supply the project.

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Network testing firm Ookla, which collects data from consumers via their popular broadband Speedtest.net service, has this morning published a new analysis of mobile 4G and 5G network data performance across UK local authorities in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The UK-wide median mobile download speed rose 15% to 63.03Mbps in 2025, but big gaps remain.

Firstly, it’s important to consider that mobile performance remains a difficult thing to study, not least because end-users are always moving through different areas (indoor, outdoor and underground), using different devices with different capabilities and the surrounding environment is ever changeable (weather, trees, buildings etc.). All of this can impact signal quality, and that’s before we consider any differences in network (backhaul) capacity or spectrum bands between mast sites etc.

Suffice to say that studies of mobile broadband speed are inherently open to variation, but the top networks often tend to be those with a combination of the best 4G or 5G coverage, a good amount of radio spectrum and the most advanced technologies.

Despite this, Ookla’s latest data found that the number of local authorities where at least 60% of Speedtest samples met or exceeded a 25Mbps (Megabits per second) “good experience” threshold grew from 112 in Q1–Q3 2024 to 126 in Q1–Q3 2025. The share of studied local authorities where a clear majority of tests achieve this performance level has thus risen from about 64% to around 72% in a single year. Not bad.

At the country level, UK mobile broadband performance improved notably between 2024 and 2025. The national median download speed rose from approximately 55.02Mbps to 63.03Mbps, representing a year-on-year increase of around 15%. Median upload speeds also edged higher, going from 7.80Mbps to 8.21Mbps over the same period, while median latency improved marginally from 52ms to 50ms (milliseconds).

Mobile Performance Across the Nations

Mobile outcomes continue to improve unevenly across the UKʼs nations. For example, England remains the “strongest performer“, with median download speeds rising from 57.90Mbps to 65.62Mbps, uploads from 7.80Mbps to 8.21Mbps, and latency improving from 50ms to48 ms.

By comparison, Northern Ireland saw downloads climbing from 39.74Mbps to 45.27Mbps, although it continues to suffer a material latency penalty from the physically longer routes that traffic must traverse before breaking out to the internet. This is reflected in median multiserver latency remaining higher at 66ms.

Wales, meanwhile, improved modestly (downloads up from 38.08Mbps to 40.60Mbps) but remains the slowest nation, and by the widest margin in several years. Scotland presents a mixed picture, with national median download speed slipping from 49.13Mbps to 46.05Mbps despite latency gains, suggesting that while some local authorities improved, others stagnated enough to drag down the national figure.

Mobile Performance by UK Local Authorities

Ookla’s study finds that the mobile performance gap between local authorities “remains stark“. In Q1–Q3 2025, median speeds ranged from a low of just over 10Mbps (Shetland Islands) to just under 100Mbps (Derby). Around 28% of local authorities had fewer than 60% of Speedtest samples meeting the 25Mbps download threshold, “indicating persistently poor connectivity for many in the UK“.

Predictably, those living in urban areas typically benefit from better speeds than those in rural areas, which isn’t surprising as urban areas benefit from a denser network deployment that also enables mobile operators (EE, O2 and Vodafone / Three UK) to make better use of higher frequency mobile bands (i.e. these contain more spectrum frequency for carrying extra data).

The catch being that higher frequency bands aren’t as effective in rural areas because their signals don’t travel as far as lower frequency bands, which in turn don’t contain as much spectrum frequency and thus deliver slower speeds. Suffice to say that the top performing local authorities are often those with a greater proportion of urban areas. Population density clearly correlates strongly with better outcomes below.

Best-performing 15 UK local authorities (Q1-Q3 2025)

Worst-performing 15 UK local authorities (Q1-Q3 2025)

However, some local authorities did stand out as clear improvers. For example, Luton in England saw median download speeds rise from about 51Mbps in 2024 to roughly 74Mbps in 2025, while performance for the slowest 10% of tests improved from around 3.7Mbps to about 6.2Mbps and the share of samples above 25Mbps grew from roughly 64% to about 73%. Aberdeen City in Scotland recorded similar gains, with median speeds climbing from about 72Mbps to nearly 88Mbps and the share of tests above 25Mbps rising from approximately 75% to around 79%.

The share of samples above 25Mbps has also improved modestly across the UK. For the typical authority, this share rose from around 63% in 2024 to roughly 65% in 2025, while the upper quartile moved from about 68% to around 72%.

The positive overall trend observed in national outcomes is largely said by the report to reflect the cumulative impact of several supply-side interventions. One example of this is the £1bn industry-led Shared Rural Network (SRN) project, which has materially extended 4G geographic coverage into underserved areas and is still ongoing (currently tackling some key notspots).

Ookla’s analysis shows that the proportion of mobile users spending most of their time connected to 4G networks improved over the last year, with 4G Availability rising from 96% to 97% at the UK level. The proportion of mobile users spending the majority of their time connected to 3G networks in the UK fell from 4.1% two years ago to 1.1% in 2025, which isn’t surprising given how most of the operators have now switched this off.

The UK also remains one of only a handful of countries in Europe, and globally, where at least three operators have aggressively deployed end-to-end 5G Standalone (SA) technology across a significant footprint (over 12,000 sites by July 2025 according to Ofcom), with one operator (O2) already reporting 70% population coverage and EE touting a near similar level. But clearly the picture is not perfect and some areas do still need further improvement.