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Network operator CityFibre, which have so far expanded their 10Gbps capable FTTP broadband network to cover 4.6 million UK premises (4.3m RFS) and connected 730,000 customers, has today announced that BT Group’s former Chief Architect, Neil McRae, has been appointed to be the company’s new Chief Technology & Information Officer (CTIO).

The operator has yet to put out an official press release on the development, although Telecom TV appears to have picked up on it via an internal staff notice – issued yesterday. The appointment is quite a big one for CityFibre as, aside from his obvious experience, few people know as much about the inner workings of BT’s rival network, infrastructure, digital IT and processes than McRae.

McRae is currently the Chief Network Strategist (CNS) at Juniper Networks and is expected to join CityFibre sometime in the New Year. The move also means that CityFibre’s current CTIO, John Franklin (he’s been at the operator for more than 12 years), will be moved to take on a new role as the company’s Chief Integration Officer (CIO).

The announcement comes shortly after the operator secured a crucial £2.3bn funding agreement (here), which was later followed by CityFibre changing CEO from Greg Mesch to former Goldman Sachs banker Simon Holden (here). Big developments like this often produce changes in company leadership and strategy.

McRae is certainly likely to have plenty of work when he arrives, with CityFibre currently known to be lining up several further acquisitions in the UK’s alternative broadband network space and planning future network enhancements. Some recent talks have also involved one of the market’s other major altnets, Netomnia (here), although no official agreements have been reached.. yet.

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The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned an online banner advert for SpaceX’s ultrafast broadband satellite service, Starlink, after it was found to be “misleading” because the offer of free terminal hardware (normally £299) omitted several key bits of material information.

The Starlink promotion in question will probably be familiar to some of ISPreview’s readers, as we’ve written about it before. In this case, the ad contained the following text alongside an image of Starlink’s hardware kit: “£0 £299 for the Standard Kit with 12-Month Residential Service Plan commitment“. Below the image, small text stated: “Availability and price may vary based on location […] Terms apply. Review the FAQs on starlink.com to learn more”.

However, readers may recall that this promotion wasn’t available to every location, and in some areas those who tried to sign up also found that they had to pay a demand surcharge in addition to the £299 hardware fee (at the time this was an issue across a big part of South East England); this appears to have been what prompted the complaint. The ASA also found some other issues in their ruling.

ASA Ruling REF: A25-1298384

The map provided by Starlink showed that the offer was not available to consumers living across the south-east of England; in Greater London, Kent, Essex, the southern part of Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Berkshire, most of Hampshire, Surrey, West Sussex and East Sussex. We understood those areas amounted to approximately a third of the UK population. We considered that because the offer was not available to consumers in a specifically defined geographical region, covering a significant proportion of the UK population, that was a significant limitation and qualification to the offer which should have been made clear in the ad. We concluded the ad was misleading because it omitted that material information.

Furthermore, as referenced above, we considered consumers would understand that if they were not eligible for the offer, they would pay £299 for the Standard Kit plus the cost of the 12-month plan. While that was the case for some customers, others were charged an additional upfront ‘demand surcharge’, which we noted for the complainant amounted to £195. Because the ad implied that consumers would not pay more than £299 plus the monthly cost of the 12-month plan, when that was not the case, we considered that the ad was also misleading in this regard.

We concluded the ad was misleading because it omitted material information, including the cost of the 12-month service plan, the geographical limitation on the availability of the promotional price offer, and that consumers who were not eligible for the promotional price may be charged an additional fee.

As usual, the ASA banned the advert in its current form and told Starlink to ensure that their future ads for the promotional price offer did not omit material information. The company has since tweaked the language of their promotion.

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The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned a direct mailing and circular advert for UK ISP The One Broadband (DSV Communications Ltd), which occurred after both were found to have misleadingly suggested that some of those who received the promotions currently only received “poor broadband connectivity” from their existing service, when that was not the case.

Both of the ads were addressed to “Dear Resident” and included claims such as “your current connection 30Mbps”, “your household has been identified as having poor broadband connectivity” and “caused by a poor broadband connection”, which the ASA considered would be understood by the recipients to be objective claims that would apply in relation to their own household and service provision.

The ASA also considered that they would understand the claims “The One fixes this. By connecting to The One, you will benefit from 100% fibre broadband and a state of the art WiFi 6 router. The result? 70x faster speeds and 5x better reliability” to mean that by switching to The One, any connectivity issues with their broadband would be solved and their broadband would be 70 times faster and five times more reliable.

However, two recipients of the ads promptly complained that they thought this was misleading, not least because both said they were already using the latest Fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) broadband network and had no issues with their current broadband connectivity. But the ISP said they were aiming to target those who they thought would still be on slower copper based lines (FTTC etc.).

ASA Ruling Ref: G25-1302034

We acknowledged that the ads emphasised connecting to full fibre and ad (a) stated that poor connectivity was “often by a reliance on the old copper network and having outdated WiFi routers” but we considered that this was not sufficient to override the impression that each ad had been sent to a particular household that had been identified as having a poor broadband connection that would be fixed by switching to The One. We noted that ad (b) did not contain the same reference to “the old copper network”.

Although households who were still using older technologies would benefit from performance improvements such as higher speeds and better reliability by changing to full fibre, because the ads had also been targeted to households who were already using full fibre broadband, and were not therefore experiencing the poor broadband connection and speeds of 30mbps stated in the ads, we concluded the claims in ads (a) and (b) which suggested consumers at specific location and household addresses were experiencing poor broadband connectivity were misleading.

The ads breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rule 3.1 and (Misleading Advertising).

The ruling is likely to have an impact on other broadband ISPs that may try to personalise promotions in this way and then distribute them more generally. The ASA banned the ads in their current form and warned DSV/The One to “ensure that when targeting a neighbourhood to promote full-fibre services their future advertising did not misleadingly suggest consumers at a specific household or address had been identified as having poor broadband connectivity or speeds when that was not the case.”

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The Government has today complemented their Digital Inclusion Action Plan (DIAP) by launching 80 local schemes across the UK, which will offer free digital skills training and other support to help some of the most vulnerable in communities get online with confidence (i.e. disadvantaged young people to elderly people and the homeless etc.).

The new schemes, which will be funded by the £11.7m Digital Inclusion Innovation Fund (DIIF), are largely community-led initiatives that aim to help close the digital divide and “deliver national renewal” by improving digital stills to help boost employment opportunities, save people money, improve health and make life easier.

For example, disadvantaged young people across the North and Midlands will use e-sports to learn new digital skills and develop safe online behaviours; over 7,000 older people will learn how to use the NHS app to manage their health; and people experiencing homelessness will be able to access devices and data to get online to help them find accommodation and other essentials.

Examples of the 80 Schemes

➤ The Bromley by Bow Centre’s Connected Lives project, visited by the Minister this week. This will support residents who attend the Centre’s Welcome Hub programmes, like its community food pantry, by providing digital skills training and devices to use for practical life tasks like managing benefits and paying bills online.

➤ A project run by Age UK will help thousands of older people through events and skills sessions, to learn how to use the NHS app to manage health matters. Helping improve their physical and digital health at the same time.

➤ Sheffield United’s Community Foundation will trial using e-sports video gaming to help 400 young people build digital skills and confidence, and raise awareness on being safe online. The Safe to Play project will adapt e-sports as a vehicle for digital inclusion in their existing Football Club charities youth programmes. Each club will deliver a 6–8 week programme of weekly workshops and esports play sessions, combining practical digital learning for young people, within a fun, safe and trusted environment.

➤ The University of Bristol’s Future IDEAS project will bring together digitally excluded members of the community, and digital design experts to co-create a chat bot that will be used to facilitate digital skills and confidence building for the public. The co-creation will ensure the chatbot is built to understand the needs and capabilities of the people it’s being built to support. The chatbot will then be trialled in a rollout in community hubs alongside trained digital champions to measure its success.

Portions of the fund have also been allocated to the devolved governments in Scotland (£764,020), Wales (£400,368) and Northern Ireland (£267,249), to ensure this is a UK-wide digital inclusion drive.

Minister for Digital Inclusion, Liz Lloyd, said:

“This Government is tearing down the barriers to success and making the future work for all, not just the fortunate.

Being online is something many of us take for granted, but for millions it could mean a new job opportunity, quicker access to healthcare or a lifeline to the local community.

This fund will both empower community organisations to help those most at risk of being left behind get the skills, access and confidence they need – while also informing how we can help even more people in the future.”

The impact of these projects will also inform future initiatives to help get more people online. A full list of the 80 projects can be found below.

Full List of 80 Funded Projects

• Project: Bridging the Digital Divide: Scouts Connecting Communities
• Funding amount: £25,827

• Project: Digital Champion Programme
• Funding amount: £289,247

• Project: Include to Empower: Scale Up
• Funding amount: £31,817

• Project: Digital Together
• Funding amount: £47,781

• Project: Community Computing Clubs – Increasing young peoples confidence in using digital technology to shape their future.
• Funding amount: £100,000

• Project: Digital Futures Work Experience Programme
• Funding amount: £261,577

• Project: Tackling Technology Together – Bassetlaw
• Funding amount: £120,000

• Project: Mind the Gap: Digital Skills for Mental Health
• Funding amount: £40,000

• Project: Digital Futures: Building an Inclusive Computing Suite for Every Child
• Funding amount: £37,405

• Project: Cyber Savvy
• Funding amount: £26,053

• Project: NextGen Dev
• Funding amount: £30,000

• Project: Scaling ‘My Blueprint for All’ for greater access and digital equality
• Funding amount: £83,491

• Project: Boundary IT Zone (BITZ)
• Funding amount: £32,248

• Project: Digital Inclusion Fenland
• Funding amount: £36,030

• Project: Digital Inclusion and Advice Transformation with WyserASSIST
• Funding amount: £121,500

• Project: Carers Online Portal
• Funding amount: £68,193

• Project: Coalfields Game Academy
• Funding amount: £75,710

• Project: Power Up: Gamifying Essential Digital Skills Acquisition for Economically Disadvantaged Young People
• Funding amount: £49,972

• Project: Digital Futures Croydon: Skills, Access and Opportunity For All
• Funding amount: £133,485

• Project: Health Clicks: Improving Health Outcomes through Digital Skills
• Funding amount: £40,868

• Project: Community Drug and Alcohol Recovery Services (CDARS) Digital Inclusion Programme
• Funding amount: £62,025

• Project: Assistive Technology – Digital Inclusion
• Funding amount: £100,000

• Project: Coventry Citizens Advice Digital Access Hub
• Funding amount: £36,698

• Project: From Farm to Family: Digital Inclusion for Equitable Access to Local Food
• Funding amount: £216,298

• Project: Seniors Go Digital
• Funding amount: £26,200

• Project: EcoCode – Digital skills contextualised through sustainability and climate action
• Funding amount: £176,625

• Project: Barking and Dagenham Libraries Digital Inclusion Project
• Funding amount: £410,215

• Project: Social return on investment of essential digital skills delivery leading to digital service usage
• Funding amount: £375,023

• Project: Discover Digital Inclusion – Your Opportunity
• Funding amount: £59,514

• Project: The DIGI (Digital Inclusion Gloucestershire Initiative) Home Visit Project
• Funding amount: £95,063

• Project: Voice Beyond Words: iPad-Based Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) for Non-Verbal Autistic Pupils
• Funding amount: £45,000

• Project: A 15-Months BAME Digital Bridge Initiative
• Funding amount: £41,395

• Project: Essential Digital Skills and AI Employability Pilot (South-West)
• Funding amount: £156,945

• Project: Outside In: The wise kids and the whizz kids
• Funding amount: £36,100

• Project: Supporting Local Authorities to Assess and Embed Digital Inclusion
• Funding amount: £238,131

• Project: Digital Doctors
• Funding amount: £304,365

• Project: Digital Pathways to Recovery – Building Skills, Confidence and Belonging
• Funding amount: £189,902

• Project: Elstree Immersive Digital Inclusion Hub – Hertsmere Community Innovation Pilot
• Funding amount: £250,000

• Project: iDEA Community Connect
• Funding amount: £100,000

• Project: Better Connected
• Funding amount: £33,482

• Project: Emergency Connectivity: Scaling Free, Portable Wi‑Fi for Digitally Excluded People in Temporary and Supported Housing
• Funding amount: £133,252

• Project: Digital Skills for a Healthy Life
• Funding amount: £52,719

• Project: I-GIVE Digital Inclusion Labs: Student-led workshops to empower Year 12 and Year 13 BTEC students with digital skills and confidence.
• Funding amount: £79,095

• Project: Let’s Get Digital
• Funding amount: £36,017

• Project: Embedding Digital Inclusion in Advice Services
• Funding amount: £30,527

• Project: Innovating in Trusted Spaces: Libraries Advancing the Digital Inclusion Action Plan
• Funding amount: £310,463

• Project: Digital Innovation to support employment
• Funding amount: £96,812

• Project: Login LCR
• Funding amount: £324,026

• Project: Digital Equity Project: Growing Inclusion through family and maternity services across Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes (BLMK)
• Funding amount: £137,227

• Project:Understanding Shift Click: Critically appraising successful digital inclusion programmes with young people from underrepresented backgrounds
• Funding amount: £91,316

• Project:Connected for All
• Funding amount: £32,090

• Project: ASK Cora and ASK Taylor – Empowering Carers with Digital Inclusion (Accessible Information and Support)
• Funding amount: £43,147

• Project: Improving Older Adults’ Digital Skills Through Peer-to-Peer Networks
• Funding amount: £57,353

• Project: Digital Inclusion Spatial Equity Analysis Mapping Project
• Funding amount: £91,748

• Project: Digital Neighbourhoods: Scaling Out Together’s LGBTQ+ Hub Model
• Funding amount: £63,200

• Project: ‘AI.Can’ – Building skills in existing AI tools to make everyday digital tasks easier for people with learning disabilities and autism (LD/A).
• Funding amount: £75,123

• Project: A neighbourhood approach to digital inclusion of older people: Trialling Behavioural Systems Mapping (BSM) in 5 communities
• Funding amount: £138,106

• Project: Safe to Play
• Funding amount: £303,087

• Project: Deaf Digital Health Roadshow
• Funding amount: £58,066

• Project: Build and Connect (Digital Inclusion Innovation Fund)
• Funding amount: £45,185

• Project: Accessing Digital Welfare
• Funding amount: £183,183

• Project: Connected Lives: Skills, access and confidence for everyday life
• Funding amount: £105,350

• Project: IC Nexus: Digital Skills for Work
• Funding amount: £67,136

• Project: Digital Skills for Life
• Funding amount: £28,815

• Project: Oldham Digital Futures: Scaling Skills, Access, and Opportunity
• Funding amount: £266,084

• Project: Digitally Connected Communities
• Funding amount: £79,885

• Project: Future IDEAS
• Funding amount: £81,030

• Project: Trusted connections: Where digital skills meet community
• Funding amount: £234,854

• Project: EmpowerNet – scaling client-led model of digital inclusion for homeless and housing-insecure communities
• Funding amount: £87,623

• Project: Live Digital Inclusion Lab – making exclusion visible, actionable and preventable
• Funding amount: £86,068

• Project: Digital Technology for People with Vision Impairment in Norfolk
• Funding amount: £98,842

• Project: Wesley Hall Digital Pathway to Empowerment
• Funding amount: £90,625

• Project: WM:Connect, Delivering 2 initiatives – The Hub and WM: Together
• Funding amount: £ 399,837

• Project: Digital Wigan – Access for All programme
• Funding amount: £38,438

• Project: Nature Story: Digital Inclusion via Natural World Storytelling
• Funding amount: £32,019

• Project: Bridge: The digital literacy platform for young people engaged with domestic abuse services
• Funding amount: £189,632

• Project: Creating Community: Increasing digital inclusion for refugee and asylum-seeking women
• Funding amount: £77,068

• Project: DigitALL Women
• Funding amount: £28,012

• Project: Digital Gateway in to Employment
• Funding amount: £150,000

• Project: Youth Digital Wellness Project
• Funding amount: £32,897

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The Chief Technology Officer of major alternative network provider CityFibre, David Tomalin, has provided an update on their plans to upgrade their Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband infrastructure to support 50G-PON (50Gbps Passive Optical Network) and then 100G-PON technology in the future.

At present, CityFibre’s network has only just completed its upgrade from slower GPON to XGS-PON (Symmetric 10Gbps PON) technology, which is how they were recently able to launch a 5.5Gbps speed broadband product at wholesale (here) for ISP partners like Sky Broadband to use. But they’ve also previously spoken very broadly about potentially going even faster than 10Gbps in the future – possibly up to 100Gbps (here).

Tomalin now appears to have developed a clearer plan for what network upgrades they’ll deliver over the next 10-15 years. According to what he told TelcoTitans (paywall), the plan is to adopt 50G PON as part of their “next [logical] business evolution” for the timeframe that runs until 2032 (exact timelines remain unknown). Business connections will be the first to benefit from this, followed later by residential customers during the 2030s.

At some point in the mid-2030s they’ll then “possibly” look to upgrade from 50G to 100G-PON, which is partly due to there being a lot of similarities in chip evolution and compatibilities between 100G and 50G. “We can definitely see there is a path to possibly move from 50 to 100 in the mid-2030s. So we’re now looking at that type of evolution,” said Tomalin.

However, it’s important to stress that the future deployment of such upgrades isn’t just about competitive bragging rights over faster speeds. The adoption of something like 50G-PON can also make managing networks and their capacity more cost-effective, particularly as the network fills up with customers.

The only UK network operator to actually deploy 50G PON technology in a live commercial network is currently Netomnia, albeit somewhat of a very limited demand-led service for business customers. But various others like Openreach (here) and ITS Technology (here) have conducted trials of the technology and the latter may go live with real deployments in 2026. CityFibre tends to use York as their city for testing such things, so that’ll be one to watch in future years.

Naturally, there will always be those who find reason to moan about the need for such upgrades (many online services still don’t really benefit from 1Gbps+ speeds). But pushing the boundaries of modern technology is part of what makes an operator exciting (marketing carries power) and as coverage matures then service performance / quality inevitably becomes part of the next competitive battleground, alongside price.

The catch for retail ISPs is that, in order to take advantage of such speeds, they’ll need to continue to invest in more capacity and better equipment (e.g. optical modems / ONT and routers, as well as fresh engineer visits for existing customers). All of that comes with its own costs and complexities. But in any case, CityFibre’s focus over the next few years will be on getting the most out of their 10Gbps capable XGS-PON network and ensuring ISPs are able to benefit from that.

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The telecoms regulator has today published their annual Online Nation 2025 report, which examines how we all use and interact with the internet in the United Kingdom. Overall, it found that 95% of people aged 16+ have access to the internet at home, and the average time spent per day online (excluding work) is 4 hours and 30 minutes (up 10 mins from last year).

Young adults were found to spend the most time online (18-24 = 6 hours and 20 mins a day), while those aged 65+ spend the least time online (3 hours 20 mins). Women also spend more time online than men across all adult age groups. The daily average for women was 4 hours 43 minutes (26 minutes more than men). 

Smartphones typically accounted for the majority of online time for both genders (men: 75%; women: 79%). But Men were more likely to use a computer, dedicating 15% of their online time (38 minutes) to it, compared to 8% for women. Women (14%) spent slightly more time than men (10%) on tablets.

Sadly, this also means that 5% of people aged 16+ do NOT have internet access at home (unchanged from 2024 but down from 7% in 2022–23). Among those aged 16 to 54, home internet access is near universal, with only 1-3% lacking it. The likelihood of being offline increases notably with age: 13% of individuals aged 65 and above remain without home internet, consistent with the previous year, and this rises to 20% among those aged 75 and over.

Most (81%) of those without internet access at home were unlikely or certain not to get access at home in the next 12 months; 9% said they were likely and a further 6% responded that they did not know. Of those aged 65+ without internet access at home, 97% stated they were unlikely to get it in the next 12 months, with a large proportion (81%) saying this was due to a lack of interest or need, while 24% say that someone else can go online for them if necessary (up from 19% in 2024), and 12% state that internet use is too complicated (down from 16%).

In 2025, 18% of people aged 16 and over without home internet access said they were unlikely to get it within the next year due to cost-related reasons (a decrease from 27% in 2023). Of these, the majority (11%) cited the cost of broadband set-up specifically (down from 18% in 2024), while concerns about the monthly broadband cost more than halved, falling from 11% in 2024 to 5% in 2025.

Ofcom’s full report is 115 pages long and goes into a lot more detail, so we’ve summarised some of the other key findings below.

Summary of Key Findings

Online Landscape

Half (51%) of time online is spent on services owned by Alphabet or Meta

YouTube remained the most-used Alphabet-owned service, used by 94% of adult internet users in May 2025. Time spent on YouTube also increased, reaching an average of 51 minutes a day (not including the TV set), compared to 47 minutes in 2024. Google Search was used by 82% of online adults in the month.

The combination of Facebook and Messenger remained the most widely used Meta-owned service used by 93% of online adults in May 2025, averaging 42 minutes a day. WhatsApp continued its upward trend, with 90% of adults using it in May 2025, up from 87% in 2024. Time spent per person per day on WhatsApp also increased, reaching 17 minutes in 2025.

Amazon, Microsoft, and the BBC rounded out the top five most used online services, with their sites and apps visited by 90%, 87%, and 82% of UK online adults in May 2025, respectively. This ranking was consistent across all UK nations. The BBC (including BBC Online, iPlayer and Sounds) was the highest-ranking UK-based organisation.

Smartphone users use on average 41 apps in a month

This has increased by +3 apps since 2024. WhatsApp was used by 92% of UK adult smartphone users in May 2025, up from 91% in 2024. The Facebook app continued a gradual increase, rising to 85% from 84% in 2024 and 81% in 2023. Google Maps consolidated its position as third most-used smartphone app, by 77% of adults in the month.

Online sectors

Google is still the most-used search service, but Gen AI services are changing the sector

Google search with 3 billion monthly UK monthly web searches remains the most used search service and is rolling out AI overviews in search. Around 30% of keyword search queries deliver AI-supported overviews and 53% of UK people say they often see AI summaries. This is largely passive adoption by users who are using their traditional search service and getting AI overviews included. Gen-AI chatbots are also used for search, and ChatGPT had 252m web visits in August 2025

YouTube, Facebook/Messenger and Instagram are the top three social media services

YouTube is in front of all social media platforms in both UK user numbers and time spent, with the average time per day reaching 51 minutes, up from 47 minutes in 2024. Meta-owned platforms are second and third. Facebook/Messenger was visited by users for an average of 43 minutes per day and Instagram for an average of 20 minutes. Use of Facebook/Messenger is slightly weighted toward 35+ users, whereas for YouTube and Instagram there is a strong skew towards younger adults (18-34).

TikTok visitor numbers (56% of online adults in May 2025) have increased, driven by younger internet users (18-34 users: 49 minutes a day). In contrast, X (formerly Twitter) experienced a decline in users, to 39% of online adults in May 2025 from 45% a year earlier.

Among the top 10 social media and VSP services, Pinterest exhibits the strongest female skew, with 69% of its visitors female. X is the only top 10 social media service where men are the predominant visitors (60% male), while Reddit is also weighted towards men in time spent on the service.

WhatsApp is the top messaging app and is growing

Ninety per cent of UK online adults used WhatsApp in 2025. Facebook Messenger remained the second most-used service (58%); however user numbers fell by 7%, continuing its downward trend from 2024.

On average, 74% cent of UK online adults accessed WhatsApp each day in May 2025, up from 64% in May 2024. Facebook Messenger was used by 23% each day, down from 30% in 2024.

Age assurance is impacting the UK porn sector

There are thousands of services used by UK adults. Pornhub remains the largest UK pornography service with 6% share of total visits. The top 10 services together account for around 25% of the overall market.

From 25 July 2025, services providing content that is potentially harmful to children, including pornographic content, have been required to implement Highly Effective Age Assurance (HEAA) measures. All of the top-10 most visited pornography services have implemented age assurance, and after a decline following 25 July, visitor numbers to those sites continue to be monitored. On average, every day, 7.8 million visitors from the UK are accessing adult services who have deployed age assurance.

VPN usage more than doubled in the UK following HEAA becoming mandatory, rising from about 650k daily users before 25 July 2025 and peaking at over 1.4m in mid-August 2025, but has gradually declined to around 900K in November.

Most (59%) UK adults use online intermediaries for their online news

97% of online adults visited a news service in May 2025, spending an average of 10 minutes on these services per day, level with 2024. The BBC remains the most-visited brand with a news service, used by 77% of UK online adults in a month. The BBC and The Sun (45%) were the only online news services with top five reach in each of the UK nations. The Guardian (44%) became the third-highest reaching news service in 2025, up from fifth in 2024.

Six in ten UK adults (59%) said they used some form of online intermediary for their news consumption. Four of the top ten individual news sources are social media platforms (Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and X).

Online Adult Experiences

Adults are less positive about the internet’s societal impact than they were last year

Only 33% felt the internet is good for society in June 2025, down from 40% in June 2024. Also, while 65% of adults believe the personal benefits of being online outweigh the risks in June 2025, this figure has declined steadily from 71% in June 2023. There has also been a small shift in people’s views on the impact of being online on their wellbeing: only 29% felt being online positively affects their mental health (28% disagreed), down from 33% in June 2024.

Fewer adults feel freer to be themselves online than offline (25%, down from 30% in June 2024). Only 35% feel they can share opinions more easily online than offline.

More people say they have seen something upsetting online than last year – but there has been a decline in exposure to potentially harmful content

In June 2025, 37% of adults said they had seen something upsetting online in the past four weeks (up from 31% in June 2024). However, there has been a decline in those saying they have encountered specific types of potentially harmful content from a pre-defined list—66% in June 2025, down from 69% in January 2025 and 68% in June 2024.

The most-encountered potential harms were misinformation (41%), scams/fraud/phishing (34%), offensive language (33%), hateful or discriminatory content (26%) and unwelcome friend and follow requests (25%). While experience of most of the surveyed potential harms has remained stable or declined since last year, encounters with fake/deceptive images or videos rose and is now the sixth-most-experienced (22%, up from 18% in June 2024).

Relatively recently, measures came into place requiring online services to protect users from illegal content (17 March 2025). So far, experiences of encountering content in categories where the content is perceived to be illegal has remained stable or decreased in all surveyed cases: there was a decrease in those who said they encountered it in the past four weeks in seven out of 16 potential harms in this category that we track.

Social media platforms are the most-commonly stated service type where recent potential harms were encountered

59% of those encountering potential harms said that their most recent encounter was on social media. The next most common service types where potential harms were encountered were video-sharing platforms 9%, and email 8% (especially among 55+; 14%).

The platforms most likely to be associated with users most recent encounters with potential online harms were Facebook (29% of most recent potential harms), Instagram (16%) and X (14% falling from 18% in 2024).

Potential online harms were encountered in a variety of ways, most commonly: scrolling through feeds (36% of potential harms), in comment sections (22%) and when watching content selected by the user (11%).

60% took some action as a result of encountering their most recent potential online harm

The most common action was reporting, complaining or flagging of content, undertaken by 35% of users for their most-recently-encountered potential harm (of those, one third said they knew the outcome of their report or complaint). Of the 40% who did nothing, their top reasons were not seeing the potential harm as serious/harmful enough (47%), not seeing the need to do anything (25%) and a belief that it wouldn’t help (21%). One in ten said that they didn’t know what to do (10%).

Women are more likely than men to want more online safety measures

In 2025, almost half (48%) of adult internet users would like to see more safety measures in place on platforms – a sentiment that has been steadily increasing since tracking began in June 2023 (40%). Women (57%) are more likely to agree with this than men (38%).

When asked who is most responsible for ensuring posted content on platforms is appropriate, 37% say there should be more onus on the platform hosting the content and 21% say the onus should be on the individual who posts. With regards to search engines, 42% say these have most responsibility for controlling what is presented in search results, but 24% say individuals should manage settings. When asked to choose between the importance of the internet in supporting free speech versus the importance of sites moderating offensive views, 37% preferred to advocate free speech while 27% were supportive of platforms acting to protect users from offensive views. Women and minority ethnic users were more likely to support moderation of offensive views.

Overall, 61% overall feel confident in their ability to stay safe online, but this was lower among those aged 55+ (54%) and women (55%). Just over half (56%) believe common sense is enough to avoid harm and only 13% say it’s impossible to avoid harmful content.

Children Online

Children aged 8-14 spend an average of nearly 3 hours online each day

This increases to 4 hours among 13-14 year-olds, and is around 2 hours for 8-9-year-olds. It is important to note that this only includes time spent on smartphones, tablets and computers, and does not include games consoles.

Despite not being one of the top-ten services in number of child users, Snapchat (an average of 45 minutes a day spent across all 8-14s) is only just behind YouTube (48 minutes) in the total time that children spent online – combined, Snapchat and YouTube accounted for over half (52% or 1 hour 32 minutes) of the total time spent online among 8-14s.

YouTube and Google search were used by the highest numbers of children, with almost all 8-14-year-olds using them (96% and 95% respectively). Social media sites and messaging services also made it into the top-10 services used by this age group, including Facebook, WhatsApp and TikTok.

A significant amount of the time online spent by children is at night: across four of the main services used by children – YouTube, Snapchat, TikTok and WhatsApp – 15-24% of the time spent for the whole 8-14 age range is between 9pm and 5am and 4-10% of the time spent is late night (11pm-5am), depending on the platform.

Most children are happy with what they do online, though this is lower for older children

Overall, nine in ten (91%) children aged 8-17 say they are happy with the things that they do online. Younger children aged 8-9 were more likely than older children to be happy with their online activity. While there were no differences overall between boys and girls (mostly/always happy combined), boys were more likely than girls to ‘always’ be happy (47% vs 40%).

Eight in ten (81%) children aged 8-17 said they were happy that the things they see online are ‘appropriate for their age’; however, only three in ten (31%) said they were ‘always’ happy about this. Younger children (aged 8-9) were more likely to be happy that what they see online is appropriate for their age, than those aged 13-15 (84% vs 79%). This is perhaps a reflection of this teenage group using social media more (55% of 3-12s are reported to use social media apps compared to 96% of 13-17s) and our research shows this is where children are more likely to be exposed to inappropriate content for their age.

Over half (56%) of children felt that being online had a ‘mostly’ good effect on how they feel about themselves. A small minority (3%) felt it had a ‘mostly’ bad effect, while a third (34%) felt it had a bit of both good and bad.

Lower levels of happiness with online activities and likelihood of feeling good about themselves, corresponded for some groups with higher exposure to content harmful to children, including among children with a health condition and children aged 13+ who identified as Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Pansexual or Queer. This may indicate exposure plays a role in these differences.

Many children use the online world to aid their wellbeing

Our research asked children aged 13-17 who go online whether they use websites, apps or other online services to help with various aspects of their wellbeing, and overall 69% said they did so. The most likely reasons were to help them relax (45%) or improve their mood (32%). Ofcom’s research into the use of Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR)1 and self-improvement content among children aged 11-17 found that these types of content are also being used to help children relax. While three-quarters said they had used ASMR or self-improvement content in general, more than half (53%) said they used ASMR in particular to help them relax. However, a similar proportion (52%) who used ASMR disliked at least one thing about it (such as disgusting sounds and images, and inappropriate language or dress). This was higher still among those who used self-improvement content, with 70% saying they disliked at least one thing about it (such as body shaming and toxic messaging).

Nearly all children say that being online helps them to learn about the world, develop new skills and build social connections

Aiding their education is one area where children feel the internet benefits them. Nearly eight in ten (78%) of 13-17s say the internet helps with their schoolwork. And our device tracking showed that 76% of 8-14s visited an education-related service in a month. When surveyed, more than half (55%) of 13-17-year-olds selected ‘to learn a new skill’ and 46% ‘to develop creative skills’ as a benefit of being online.

Parents agree there are beneficial aspects to their child being online – in particular, helping with schoolwork (72%), finding information about personal issues (35%) and hearing about the news (31%).

Two-thirds (65%) of 13-17s see the online world as beneficial in building and maintaining their friendships, especially among girls (71% compared to 60% of boys). Social media and messaging apps play a big role, as 72% of 13-17s who use them agree that it helps them feel closer to their friends.

But some children identify the negative impact of endlessly scrolling online, and it leading to ‘brain-rot’

Some of the children we spoke in our qualitative Children’s Media Lives research reflected on the negative impact they experienced when they had spent a long time on their device (typically a smartphone). The term ‘brain rot’ was used by some children to describe both a genre of content and the feeling that spending hours on their devices left them with. Brain rot content is characterised by its frenetic, choppy, and nonsensical nature, leaving viewers feeling overstimulated and sometimes disoriented. Some of the children expressed negative feelings associated with spending excessive time online and engaging with this type of content.

Seven in ten secondary school age children have seen harmful content online; the most likely being bullying and hate content

The Online Safety Act distinguishes between Primary Priority Content (PPC) which is content that all children should be prevented from seeing and Priority Content (PC), which is content that children should be protected from seeing dependent on age. At the time of fieldwork (March-April 2025), seven in ten 11-17 year olds had seen or heard some form of PPC or PC in the last four weeks. Nearly all had seen some form of PC2 and 30% reported having seen or heard PPC3. This research was conducted before Ofcom’s Protection of Children (PoC) Codes of Practice came into force in July 2025. It therefore provides a baseline measure for the proportion of children saying they have been exposed to content harmful to children and is not indicative of the impact of the PoC codes measures. We will provide an update in May 2026.

Of the PPC/PC harms encountered, content related to bullying was the most likely to be seen (by 58% of 11-17s), 49% saw content related to hate, and 30% said they saw content encouraging them to do dangerous stunts or challenges and 28% saw content related to eating/drinking/inhaling harmful substances.

Two thirds of children took some form of action after seeing content harmful to children

Overall, 64% of 11–17-year-olds took some form of action after encountering harmful content online. This included both making use of functionalities on the service and taking action offline. Fifteen percent used negative sentiment tools (such as the ‘Dislike’ button), around one in 10 children chose to report the content (11%), blocked the person who put it up or sent it to them (10%), and told a grown up about their experience (10%). However, the most common response was to ignore the content (30%).

Many children regret purchases they make online

Almost six in ten (58%) children aged 8-17 said they had spent money online in the past month, whether on social media sites, video-sharing platforms, or while they were gaming. However, a third (32%) of them regretted purchases made in-game, and 43% regretted purchases made on social media. Additionally, 42% found it unclear what they were buying in games. There are different influences or persuasive features within these services that encourage children to spend including character customisation (30%), adverts (27%), recommendations from friends or family (23%) and influencer content (22%).

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The Government has clarified that it has “no plans to ban in-contract price rises” for UK consumers taking broadband, mobile and phone services, which makes their recent push to have Ofcom’s CEO, Dame Melanie Dawes, “look at in-contract price rises again“ seem increasingly unlikely to result in any big changes.

At the start of 2025 Ofcom began requiring telecoms providers to adopt a new approach to mid-contract price hikes, which did away with the old and confusing percentage and inflation-based model – replacing it with one that must now set out such price rises “clearly and up-front, in pounds and pence, when a customer signs up” (here). This made annual price hikes clearer and more transparent, but also resulted in many users being hit by even bigger price hikes – often disproportionately hitting those on the cheapest plans with the biggest hikes.

In response, many providers later followed BT’s lead by, for example, setting out a new pricing policy that would increase the monthly broadband price that customers pay by a flat £3 extra – effective from March or April each year (the level of increase varies a bit between providers). But inflation has remained higher than originally anticipated and, partly as a result of that, BT recently announced that they would increase their annual hikes by an extra pound to £4.

Other providers have since started to follow this practice, but what really caught attention was O2’s decision to go a step further by applying this to existing customers too (i.e. those who had signed-up via the previous policy were forced to accept the new one). In fairness, O2 did allow customers impacted by this to exit their contract penalty free, which Ofcom acknowledged when expressing their own “disappointment” at the change (here).

Fast-forward a public outcry or two and the Government’s Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, Liz Kendall MP, initially responded to this by appearing to direct the regulator to take a firmer line (here). For example, Kendall suggested Ofcom at least consider the possibility of adopting a “similar regime to those such as insurance, where new and existing customers need to be offered the same deal“, although we feel an outright ban on mid-contract price hikes would be a better approach.

The UK Government’s Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, then waded in (here) by calling on telecoms providers to “reinforce” their commitment to “treating customers fairly” by, among other things, confirming that “customers under contract will not face price rises beyond those they signed up for“. But this statement did cause some confusion, due to how it could be interpreted in two different ways.

On the one hand, it could be seen as the Chancellor making a call for mid-contract price hikes to be banned, which is how a few reports did interpret it. But on the other hand, the reference to price rises “beyond those they signed up for” could be seen as merely objecting to O2’s specific approach (i.e. opposing the forced application of a new price hike policy to existing customers, but not specifically opposing mid-contract hikes).

Government Makes it Clear

The issue came up for debate again yesterday, this time in the Lords Chamber in the Palace of Westminster (here), where the government were asked, by Lord Sikka, about “what steps they are taking to ensure price increases by mobile phone and broadband companies are fair“. The response came from the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Technology, Baroness Lloyd of Effra.

Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Government) said:

“My noble friend is right to highlight the importance of the ability to have the right contract and of giving consumers the information they need. We have no plans to ban in-contract price rises, but consumers have the right to leave, penalty-free, for 30 days from when unexpected price rises are announced by a provider.

The Chancellor and Secretary of State asked Ofcom to review the suitability of the current 30-day notice period, to ensure that it can be enacted by consumers who experience unexpected and unannounced mid-contract price rises.”

In short, it now seems increasingly unlikely that the government will push Ofcom to make any big changes against telecoms providers around the issue of mid-contract price hikes, which means we may well see other providers taking O2’s approach in the future. Unless, of course, Ofcom’s looming review of the matter does in fact come up with some constructively useful changes, but we won’t hold our breath for that one.

At the very least it would be good to see Ofcom’s review address the unfairness of how mid-contract price hikes are currently being applied (e.g. applying the same flat c.£2-4 monthly increase to those who pay just c.£20 a month and those who pay c.£100 – disproportionately targeting those least able to afford it), which in our view is one of the biggest issues.

However, it is still important to recognise that network operators often do still have to increase prices due to costs rising in other areas, such as for service provision, regulation, energy and the need to invest in new network upgrades etc. At the same time, the level of inflation has remained much higher than it was previously forecast to be, which changes the risk and cost assessment that each provider has to make on their pricing policies.

Adding to the feeling of the government being tone-deaf on the issue, one of the government’s recent letters even called on telecoms operators to “take proactive steps to move legacy customers onto the pounds and pence approach for price communications“. This is despite what we’ve just said above about the reality that, for some consumers, that policy will actually be resulting in lower mid-contract hikes than the new one.

On the flip side, many smaller providers are still able to figure all this into fixed price contracts that don’t apply mid-contract hikes, and so it’s not beyond the bounds of realism for the biggest providers to do the same. But until the government and Ofcom recognise that, then big retail providers will continue to get away with bad practice.

On the bright side, switching between telecoms providers has been made significantly quicker and easier in recent years, thanks to systems like One Touch Switching (OTS) on broadband + landline phone and Text-to-Switch (Auto-Switch) on mobile. Consumers can often vote with their feet if they choose, but many remain wary of doing so.

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National broadband and Ethernet operator Openreach (BT) has today announced the appointment of James Lowther as its new Managing Director (MD) for Commercial, which will become effective from January 2026. The new hire will join the operator’s Executive team and report to Deputy CEO, Katie Milligan.

James is a familiar name in this industry and has over 20 years of experience in it. He began his career at BT before holding senior roles at Virgin Media, where he led strategy and propositions, and later moved to Sweden to head the consumer division at Com Hem (now Tele2 Group). He’s since also been the Chief Marketing Officer at rural broadband ISP Gigaclear and Group Chief Commercial Officer at mobile operator Lebara, before becoming CEO of altnet Truespeed.

Katie Milligan, Deputy CEO of Openreach, said: “James brings exceptional experience and insight from across the telecoms industry, including international markets. His skills and leadership will be really valuable as we strengthen our commercial strategy and continue to connect millions of customers to our new full fibre network in the most competitive market we’ve ever faced.”

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The telecoms regulator, Ofcom, has today approved UK mobile companies and satellite operators to join forces and use the airwaves (mobile spectrum bands) to support Direct to Device (D2D) services, which will allow standard unmodified Smartphones to connect via satellites to improve 4G and 5G (calls, texts and broadband) coverage in remote areas and roaming.

Several satellite-based broadband networks are currently developing services that can directly connect to unmodified consumer Smartphones via regular mobile spectrum bands. Some examples of these include Starlink’s Direct to Cell solution (e.g. O2 Satellite in the UK from early 2026) and AST SpaceMobile‘s deal with Vodafone. In fact, some phones, like the latest iPhone and Samsung handsets, already have a basic communication system that can work via satellite (e.g. for emergencies).

However, the licences held by UK mobile operators to provide communications services do not currently authorise transmissions from space. The introduction of D2D services in terrestrial mobile bands would have also raised a number of other issues, such as through the potential for an increased risk of interference between the satellite and the ground infrastructure of the mobile operators, as well as radars etc. But Ofcom believes they’ve found the solution.

The regulator’s previous work has uncovered plenty of support for D2D satellite services within the UK market, and they’ve today issued their final decision to authorise the aforementioned change(s). Any mobile network operator that intends to provide direct-to-device services will naturally still need to request a change to its existing Ofcom licence. But no licence will be needed by ordinary smartphone users to get a signal from space.

The decision also includes changes to avoid the shared mobile bands causing disruption (interference) to air traffic control stations and mobile networks in neighbouring countries.

Ofcom’s Decision (Full Statement)

To finalise the authorisation framework enabling D2D services in the UK, today we have decided to:

• Implement a condition requiring protection for 2.7 – 3.1 GHz radars, to be included in any 2.6 GHz licence D2D schedule.

• Implement the proposed licence conditions, with the addition of a coordination clause for any licence variation requests we may receive for operation in 2.6 GHz. The new addition is indicated in the version of the D2D licence schedule set out in Annex 3; and;

• Following completion of a licence variation process, make the Regulations relating to the licence exemption of mobile handsets that connect to a D2D satellite. Following consultation, we have not made any substantive changes to the draft final Regulations. A limited number of clarificatory amendments have been made, and these are indicated in the version of the draft final Regulations set out in Annex 4.

The new approach could be particularly useful for helping to connect people in some of the remotest rural parts of the UK, as well as around coastal waters, and to act as a backup in case of terrestrial network outages or when needing to contact the emergency services. Consumers may of course need to optionally pay a bit extra to benefit from such services, the details of which should follow next year.

David Willis, Ofcom’s Group Director for Spectrum, said:

“With satellite technology, in future you could send selfies from Scafell Pike, livestream from Lake Windermere, or browse bargains from Ben Nevis.

Mobile operators are already pressing ahead to the make UK the first nation in Western Europe to have widespread access to this technology, which will see remote and rural areas be better connected than ever before, unlocking opportunities for communities, businesses and economic growth.”

The regulator said they would review this authorisation framework after the next World Radiocommunication Conference in 2027 (WRC-27).

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Mobile operator EE (BT) has once again come top in the annual 2026 umlaut connect UK Mobile Network Test, which deployed a range of different benchmarks to test 4G and 5G performance (voice and broadband) across 16 cities, 24 smaller towns and along 10,170km of major roads. On the flip side, O2 (Virgin Media) continued to be ranked at the bottom.

The study’s more scientific focused drivetests and walktests were both conducted between 27th October to 8th November 2025 using Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Smartphones for each operator. Additionally, some of the walk test teams visited several cities and travelled on trains between them. The test area accounts for 16.7 million people, or approximately 24.9% of the total population of the United Kingdom.

On top of that, the analysts also harnessed crowdsourced data, which was collected over 24 weeks from the end of May to early November 2025. A total of 5,702 million data samples were collected by this method from mobile phone users across the UK, which stems from tests conducted via various Smartphone apps with a special background diagnosis process.

Overall, EE came top in all three of the primary data, voice and crowdsourced testing categories, scoring a total of 920 points (up from 913 last year) out of a possible 1,000. Following them were Vodafone on 808 (down from 815), Three UK on 799 (up from 765) and finally, at the bottom, was O2 on 768 (up from 729) – though they did once again improve their score. Otherwise, this marks the eleventh time in a row that EE has topped the study.

Maziar Kianzad, Global Network Benchmarking Lead at umlaut, said:

“Congratulations to British Telecom for its brand EE winning our Mobile Network Test in the UK for the eleventh time in a row. The operator achieves the highest scores in all test disciplines and scores ahead of the other operators – at a gap of more than 100 points. Vodafone achieves a good second place. Three manages to clearly improve compared to its result from the previous year. The biggest score improvement, achieved up to now in our current benchmarking season, is however obtained by VMO2 – nationwide, and also in London.”

The Full Report includes a lot more data, and we’ve pasted some of that below, although it’s wise to read the main report in order to get the correct context. For example, the first output below depicts the 5G based mobile broadband data rates that the study got when conducting a simple 7-second download test (note: the column headed “0 (Mbps)” should really be called “Average (Mbps)” – this looks like an error). The second image after that shows the crowdsourced results.

7 Second Download Test on 5G Connections

Crowdsource Results