Ofcom Confirms Starlink is Viable Alternative to 10Mbps UK Broadband USO
The UK telecoms, internet content and media regulator, Ofcom, has confirmed to ISPreview that the availability of Starlink’s ultrafast satellite broadband service now means that fewer customers may need to request the 10Mbps+ Universal Service Obligation (USO) from BT across much of the country (or KCOM in Hull).
Just to recap. The USO is a legally-binding and industry-funded obligation that falls on BT across the UK and KCOM in Hull (although it’s rarely used in Hull, where FTTP is almost universal). In short, people living in areas where they can’t yet receive a 10Mbps or faster download speed, and aren’t expected to be covered by such a network in the next 12-months, can request a service capable of 10Mbps+ (1Mbps+ upload) from the forementioned internet providers.
A cost sharing model also applies here, which means that the providers will “calculate the total excess cost of the build and divide that between the eligible premises. If that amount is below £5,000 per premises (on top of the £3,400), we’ll automatically split the costs“. But in the past some areas could still end up costing hundreds of thousands of pounds, even up to £1-2m, and would thus find even the USO route to be unviable (here and here).
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However, the USO is also technology neutral and so many of those who pursued the USO option via BT in the past say they were instead offered mobile broadband (4G /5G) connections via EE (where viable), while those actually considered to have been delivered under the USO itself usually get full fibre (FTTP).
What about starlink?
Previously Starlink wasn’t considered as a viable USO alternative, partly because it was too expensive. But today the situation is different and over the past few months it’s become possible to get Starlink’s 100Mbps residential package for just £40 per month (£50 if you include the hardware rental); the service was even cheaper than this before, at least for a brief period (here).
At the same time some people who have applied for the USO from BT have recently told ISPreview that their applications were rejected due to the availability of Starlink. Crucially, BT are only obliged to provide a USO connection if no other alternative that meets the criteria is available, and Ofcom has now confirmed to us that Starlink meets the criteria.
10Mbps USO – Core Specification
➤ A minimum download “sync” speed of at least 10Mbps (Megabits per second).
➤ A minimum upload “sync” speed of at least 1Mbps.
➤ A medium response time with end-to-end latency of no more than 200ms for speech applications.
➤ A maximum sharing between customers (contention ratio) of 50:1.
➤ A minimum data allowance of 100GB.
➤ A technology neutral design.
➤ The service must be affordable – the price threshold in the USO criteria is currently £59.60 a month (at launch it was £45).
Some caveats to this are the fact that Starlink isn’t available everywhere (e.g. not everybody can access a clear view of the Sky or deploy a Starlink dish), the service pricing has an annoying tendency to vary (it may not always be viable) and some locations can occasionally attract a hefty congestion charge; the latter could make it harder for Starlink to qualify in those areas as a viable alternative to the USO. In those niche cases, customers can still approach BT to seek a connection on USO terms.
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According to Ofcom’s latest data to January 2026 (here), some 39,000 UK premises are currently deemed “unable to access decent broadband [USO] from a fixed line or fixed wireless connection” – this splits down as 23,000 in England, 9,000 in Scotland, 6,000 in Wales and just 1,500 in Northern Ireland.
The change may provide an answer to the question of why the Government haven’t published further details on their approach to reaching those who live in “Very Hard to Reach” areas with even faster speeds, since Starlink seems to now be considered a quick fix.
Speaking of which, the Government has been due to review the USO itself for a while now (here), but no progress seems to have been made on that front. Of course, these days, there may be bigger concerns looming for Starlink and similar satellite-based services (here).
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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The USO is such an anachronism in this day and age anyway. It made sense when the post office / BT were a total monopoly, but now it is imposed on BT Retail even though there isn’t a single person in this country for whom that is their only option.
So BT gets to put up thousands of pounds that they’ll never make back in revenue, let alone profit, until the customer has the ability to move to any other Openreach ISP (if BT elects to use FTTP as the solution)
If there has to be a USO, it should be applied to network operators (not one specific retail ISP) and includes some sort of cost sharing provision so that the burden doesn’t exclusively fall on BT Group’s shareholders to build out infrastructure that other ISPs can use to undercut them. Similar to how the rural mobile network projects and government funded ESN work is made available to all operators.
Thanks to our BT Investor, Ivor there for his analysis. Just to note, BT/Openreach does charge other ISP’s for wholesale access, it’s not given free of charge. “Investment” in your network, i.e. the owner of the network dips into their investment fund for infrastructure work. This is usually charged on under network charge access for others anyway. I do think though that these addresses could come last in the project roll-out not in the upfront easy to do locations that have standard predictable install cost.
If BT got copper ADSL to a house previously, which has line length issues because of noise and loss, then why is it impossible to get fibre there instead? The fibre would be on the same poles, is more resilient to noise. In most cases, I would have thought they could route back to nearest “headend”. Obviously rivers or gorges are an issue, but then if the house had ADSL copper before, there must have been a route…
The USO was dead before it even started as the speed figures were laughable back when it was published and not fit for purpose then.
BT Retail and Openreach are different entities. I thought I had made that clear in the way I wrote my post.
To repeat myself. BT Retail is expected to put up £xxxx in build costs to gain £xxx in revenue in the maximum two year period that the user can be locked in for. What Openreach might still get from a wholesale arrangement from another ISP isn’t hugely beneficial to BT Retail’s accounts, and the overall BT Group has to wait years to recoup those costs.
Maybe the copper was direct buried? Maybe the ducts have collapsed? Maybe the poles can’t take the extra load? There’s a whole load of reasons why the government owned company or the monopoly era telco might have been able to do something that today’s fully private business operating in a competitive market cannot.
10Mbps is a perfectly valid minimum for a USO, which is intended to get people online, not to provide luxurious service. It allowed BT to use alternative technologies, even if in practice they have deployed FTTP to most of those who have requested a USO service.
Kinda agree, Ivor. Makes no sense to bind a retailer with this obligation besides one thing: keeping it technology neutral.
Forcing it on networks basically means FTTP and given the entire cost is against the property that requested the service the cost cap would have to be astronomical.
This is almost an end to the USO though. If you can get Starlink you don’t qualify.
Elon derangement syndrome in full swing complete with the meme “everyone I don’t like on the internet is a Nazi”
Glad you could type that. Had you had to use your mouth it may well have been muffled, Sam.
‘Why is Elon Musk a national socialist? If anything he’s the opposite achieving sustainable travel, the human right to free speech, working on making humanity multiplanetary, cutting government waste, helping people with very serious health conditions, and here giving people access to broadband’ – Sam, https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2025/06/starlink-offers-its-uk-home-ultrafast-satellite-broadband-kit-for-free.html#comment-324250
As long as you ignore he’s doing no more for sustainable travel than many other companies, Hyperloop was his usual nonsense, the only free speech he supports is his own and those who agree with him, be mean to him on Twitter see how you do, his work on a multiplanetary humanity looks basically like the kind of plan you’d get fuelled on Ketamine, he hasn’t cut government waste DoGE going to be a net deficit increaser while costing hundreds of thousands of lives and seriously harming US research health and biosecurity. I’ll give you the serious health conditions one even if its human experimentation and nothing to do with altruism, and providing Starlink is a business. It’s actually the only part of the whole SpaceX business that actually makes money.
What DoGE did achieve beautifully, not surprising they made a beeline for them, was ending all the ongoing investigations into his companies. Nothing to see here though, right Sam? Sam? Can’t hear you with your mouth full.
‘Lol with so many nefarious actors that can already take your data including ones that can actually jail you and your concern is the visionary that wants to colonize Mars and whose number one concern is population collapse’
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2025/01/starlink-2024-report-details-1tbps-speed-leo-v3-broadband-satellites.html#comment-316364
If he’s concerned about population collapse he could stop polluting by running unapproved, dirty and inefficient gas turbines. That would help.
I would rather not have broadband than give any money to Musk.
I knew BTIvor would speak out about this, need to protect his shares.
Completely agree. Not buying anything off a Nazi directly or indirectly.
You could start by putting your toys back in your pram! What sort of “adult” uses the term Nazi in this day and age? Who has he killed? Who has he threatened to kill?
The lefts jealousy over anyone becoming a success is truly sad and pathetic, esecially when you’re a grown man.
Nut hugging a billionaire is likewise pretty sad, Gareth. The quite interesting salute he did twice probably didn’t help the perception, neither did DoGE causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands by functionally killing off USAID.
I wouldn’t use that term to describe him but certainly wouldn’t white knight him. Thin-skinned as he is I doubt he’ll read this.
All jealousy though and anyone who says anything bad about anyone with money is a lefty, sure.
Well, if you think that’s “Nut hugging a billionaire”, good for you! Here’s a gold star….
Thank you for sharing, Ad. Two of your greatest hits: telling everyone about your purchasing decisions and taking a pointless pop at someone else.
Wow, what a sad show this place is these days…. Starlink good but people voting with feelings they picked up from media or other influencers…. stay in those bubbles if you want but I go with results and Starlink gives results, talking poo doesn’t.
To be honest, I think a lot of you could do with no internet for a while, try and give some of those few braincells a chance.
That’s objectively what it is, but thanks for the gold star. I’ll put it next to the others I’ve received from people who’ve gotten upset when someone’s said something mean about the a Ketamine Fuelled Genius.
Ofcom confirms giving large amounts of money to a person that Ofcom regularly reprimands, and who ferments a civil war in the UK & bankrolls a politician who wants to report many millions of taxpaying citizens not just illegals… Is a viable option?
If I wanted to that Ofcom, I wouldn’t be stuck with 1.5mbps ADSL or 7mbps with 150ms+ of ping Three 4G
BT pays for the USO, not Ofcom. But in the above case, this is saying that Starlink can be accepted as an ALTERNATIVE to BT’s USO solution, much like 4G/5G mobile, so it’s not delivered under the USO.
We have Starlink on the max plan as we’ve been descoped from the Hampshire gigabit broadband cityfibre contract, so it was our best option. It’s am excellent service, stable, fast but hugely expensive and still doesn’t approach FTTP speeds. I do hope the government doesn’t just decide that it is the solution to those remaining areas that the Project Gigabit contracts are falling short of
The USO is effectively dead then as far as BT’s obligations to fund FTTP build is concerned – rural locations would be told that they can get Starlink, and urban locations would be told that they can use a cellular service.
The USO was never intended to force FTTP build. If it had been it wouldn’t be technology neutral.
“latency of no more than 200ms for speech applications (this rules out Satellite).”
This must be wrong. The latency of Starlink is *much* lower that 200 ms. Did it rule out satellite connections *before* Starlink?
Yes ignore that, it was a copy and paste from the original USO launch, so got included by accident.
I thought BT were going to offer their customers Starlink, when the was no hope of FTTP.
I think it is odd that Fixed Wireless Access seems to have left the chat as an option in exceptional cases where personal 4G/5G/Satellite is not available.
Potentially sharing a backhaul (satellite or multiple bonded 5GNSA/SA head ends) from a nearby concentration point. Or maybe leasing a connection from a competitor if there is one nearby but not getting all the way there and no realistic prospect that it will.
To be used where the property doesn’t have 5G signal or a sky view for satellite or is not allowed to install a Starlink dish (e.g. listed building, with limitations prohibiting an install or no location with a sky view).
As I read the USO rules, a “FWA with concentrator” approach should be fundable under USO, implemented by Openreach, and this could be at a lesser cost than FTTP.