Mayor of London Says Half of Homes Can Now Access Full Fibre

The Mayor of London UK, Sadiq Khan, has today claimed that 50% of the capital city (up from 4% in 2017) can now access a full fibre broadband ISP network, which is apparently “thanks to the Mayor’s policies and his work with boroughs and broadband providers“. We’d say only a small part of it is down to that.

Now, it is absolutely true to say that the Mayor has had some positive impacts on the broadband situation in London, such as with his efforts to reduce the barriers to build, the new London Underground fibre network (expected to help connect 728 public buildings) and to make wayleaves (i.e. legal land and property access agreements) easier to secure. City Hall estimates that upwards of £1.5bn infrastructure investment has been unlocked through negotiating these complex agreements.

However, it’s a bit of a stretch to go from that to effectively suggesting that it’s all thanks to the Mayor’s policies and his work, which rather ignores the natural impact of the competitive commercial market and private investment. The latter is currently driving the vast majority of change, not only in London, but also across the UK.

Operators like Openreach, Virgin Media, Hyperoptic, G.Network and CommunityFibre, among others, have all spent the past few years rolling out Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) networks in London and that would have occurred regardless of anything the Mayor did. But Khan is by no means the first politician to claim credit for such work, much as the UK government keeps reminding us with its various Project Gigabit announcements.

Later this year the Mayor will also be publishing guidance to the new London Plan adopted in 2021, which requires all new homes and developments to have fibre and mobile connectivity from day one. “This represents one of the strongest digital connectivity policies in the UK,” said the announcement. But then it’s also very similar to what the recently revised Building Regulations were intended to facilitate (here).

Chief Digital Officer for London, Theo Blackwell MBE, said:

“Huge progress is being made connecting hundreds of thousands of Londoners to hyperfast broadband thanks to dedicated work from local councils and telecoms companies. Homes across London are being connected to full fibre and we’ll see this grow even further with TfL’s ground-breaking 20-year partnership with BAI Communications.

Every night crews are out laying London’s new full fibre network across the Underground. This is delivering 4G and 5G for Tube passengers, but perhaps more fundamentally creates a backbone of connectivity which is reaching further into areas of the city historically under-served by the market. Up to 2017 City Hall was limited to handling out vouchers to businesses for high-speed connections, but through ambitious collaboration this has changed and new investment is now benefitting Londoners directly.”

The Mayor is also said to have focussed an additional £10 million on areas with low rates of connectivity, like Enfield, Harrow, Hounslow, Kingston and Sutton who together account for just 4.16% of all full fibre available in London. But that’s a drop in the ocean for a city the size of London.

As ever, the big question for London is with respect to how far the network operators can push FTTP. We don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect that full fibre networks could, in a few short years’ time, reach around 98% coverage. But there always seem to be gaps left over, with some islands of poor connectivity still existing even today.