70 Percent of the UK is Now Covered by Full Fibre Broadband
The latest independent data on national broadband coverage has revealed that 70% of premises across the United Kingdom have now been put within reach of a gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network, which is up strongly from 60.54% at the end of last year and 67.68% in July 2024 (these premises are all classed as ‘Ready for Service’).
The development, which is based on data from Thinkbroadband, shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise because network operators, such as Openreach (BT), Virgin Media (inc. Nexfibre), CityFibre, Netomnia, Hyperoptic, Gigaclear and many more (Summary of UK Full Fibre Builds), have been rolling out fibre optic lines at a fair rate of knots over the past few years.
The majority of this progress has so far stemmed from commercial builds, although the UK Government’s state aid funded £5bn Project Gigabit programme is now starting to play a larger role via a growing number of build contracts. All of those deals are focused upon covering the final 10-20% of hardest to reach premises (i.e. aiming to extend gigabit coverage to at least 85% of UK premises by 2025 and then around 99% “nationwide” by 2030).
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Looking forward, Ofcom recently predicted (here) that full fibre (FTTP) broadband ISP lines are currently on course to cover 95-96% of all UK properties by May 2027 (29 million premises), which rises to around 97-98% for “gigabit-capable” networks (FTTP and HFC / Cable).
Naturally, none of this will mean anything to those of you who still live in poorly served areas (often rural locations and some patches in urban areas), where the wait for something better to arrive continues to be a slow and painful one. But the fact is that we’re continuing to see both rapid and dramatic progress in the roll-out, which is making for an ever-smaller gap left to fill.
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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In Gloucestershire, the rural areas seem better covered than the urban ones, as there were specific programmes to cover these. Lots of small villages in the Cotswolds and Forest of Dean have had fibre for years. But half the city of Gloucester still does not. The wait goes on and on.
Still, reaching 70% is a good milestone after years of Britain being way, way behind the world. Hopefully we’ll cross 90% before 2026, and I can finally leave the copper world behind…
It’s good to see progress in this area, millions of pounds of productivity or what I call quality of life is greatly impacted by access to good fibre. Even with government support it is unacceptable that rural areas are better connected than the cities not least because it’s cheaper to get going in more dense environments. Perhaps bduk would do with a review of unviable urban installs before we get to the final 1% which I imagine will cost the amount close to the cost of the house it will connect to.
Thank god someone is mentioning this. I’m in a GL1 postcode area and my options are either Openreach ADSL2+ (17/1mbps) or Virgin Media HFC (up to 1100/110mbps I think but it’s not FTTP).
People seem to have a better experience on networks like Gigaclear than some of us in the city.
That’s purely because city fibre claimed the town as theirs years ago then stopped build and the govt paid gigaclear to do those rural lands which left more than half of Gloucester with no connection
im in that 30% its crazy less than a mile away has both bt and virgin full fibre and were are not even in then plans to get it in the next 6-7 years but we keep getting told its coming
My postcode has been “Under Review” for pushing on 3 years now – I don’t understand why Openreach don’t just remove my property from their plans and then Project Gigabit could subsidise the build.
Can someone explain why Openreach are being utterly useless? They have repeatedly promised rollout dates only for them to get missed due to the project getting cancelled. This is exactly what they said:
“Unfortunately, our plans are always subject to change and we are only able to advise what the current plan for a property is at any given time – this is why you received the below email advising your property was in our plans as this was the case at the time – sadly this has since changed and the project in question has been cancelled.”
Driving me nuts.
Utterly useless but passing 1 million homes every three months.
You’re unlucky. Plans change. It’s not straightforward. They’ve obviously discovered that getting to you isn’t as simple as they initially might’ve thought. They’ve explained that. Maybe they had trouble with a permission or the survey turned up something. They probably hope to overcome the difficulty later. That is all.
In my town, Skelmersdale, Openreach have shown little interest in upgrading the area to FTTP and I personally feel it’s down to the fact that geographically speaking, the large green areas between estates are too much of a headache for them. I’ve had to put up with a degrading (aluminium) line for years which was buried in the ground in the 60s. Openreach only catered to the new build estates.
Anyway, Nexfibre rolled out and covered the entire town in just 3 months or so and my service gets installed on Monday and looking at the activity here, their engineers are booked solid for weeks. Hopefully this will force Openreach to do something as there’s clearly demand for FTTP here.
I have been under fund it yourself under there we have no current plans to supply your area for 8 years now after they gave us a date for it to be done and the week before it was due they moved onto the next area and left us out.
Alex, I should have clarified that I meant in regards to my area specifically. My postcode is sandwiched between fully deployed FTTP so it’s a string of properties that have been left out – the likelihood of my postcode being served closer to 2030 appears likely.
There is no doubt that Openreach’s rollout is pretty admirable and impressive – although this should have been done years ago (thanks Maggie), but that’s a moot point entirely.
When you live in a medium sized town that is part of 30%.
The government has got this truly wrong. Breadth of coverage should have been prioritised before depth.
I’m in the same boat. Been saying this for years – we need regulation to ensure coverage is prioritised before overbuilds are permitted. Won’t happen though. If you are not rural and have been left out, you are utterly and thoroughly screwed.
For us (Winchester in Hampshire), it’s going to be a wait of another whole year before Openreach turn up. When they do, there are still no guarantees that our street is going to be cabled up.
As Mark1 mentioned, all anyone needs is ONE wholesale provider. Not this disjointed mess that we have right now.
Same here 100k+ town. Capitalism really doesn’t work with utilities and needs better regulation.
Villages nearby full of boomers have symmetrical full fibre yet we are stuck with 30 down 3 up and lots of people around here work from home.
It would be interesting to know what percentage of the UK is covered by wholesale provider FTTP so that people have a good choice.
Examples of wholesale would be Cityfibre MS3, Openreach etc.
If every home had access to a wholesale provider there would be less need of duplicate builds.
It would have been far more sensible to have say two wholesale networks in each area but that not what the government did, WE have the free for all with multiple Alt Nets most using different standards and kit. I suspect that there will be a long and slow and gainful consolidation of all these small networks and we will end up with two or three wholesale networks. It will be similar to what happened with the old Cable TV networks
70%? At this rate I feel like my road in Andover will be the last one remaining
Funny weres my full fibre I must be in the 30 percent then
30% too low for 2024…
Openreach fttp available in two thirds of our street, but not available in the rest including my home. Check shows mine by dec 2026. Why