Concerns Over UK Funding Shortfall for Gigabit Broadband Raised in Parliament
The Conservative MP for Bridgwater, Sir Ashley Fox, this week informed other Ministers that Openreach (BT) had raised “concerns that there is a shortfall in funding from the last spending review“, which he said meant there is a “risk that the Government do not meet their 99% gigabit-coverage target by 2032“.
The vast majority of gigabit broadband coverage has so far been delivered via commercial deployments (private investment) and that continues to be the case today, with the likes of Openreach and Netomnia taking the lead. On top of that, both the present Government has also been running the £5bn Project Gigabit scheme (setup by the previous Gov in 2021), which aims to help make 1000Mbps+ (gigabit) broadband speeds available to c.99% of UK premises by 2032 (this was already pushed back from 2030 last year).
According to the Government’s most recent Spending Review (here), which covers the period from 2026/27 to 2029/30, some £1.9 billion of public investment was still available for the Building Digital UK (BDUK) agency to deliver the next phase in the transformation of the country’s digital infrastructure (i.e. gigabit broadband and mobile).
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Some of that £1.9bn has since been allocated to related projects, such as the Single Supplier Framework they have with Openreach for Project Gigabit that recently increased in value from “up to” £800m to c.£1.2bn (here). But the latest suggestion is that more funding may be required to achieve the Project’s ultimate target on time.
Conservative MP Sir Ashley Fox said:
“Many villages are still looking at waits until 2030 for the roll-out of broadband, and I worry that some might have to wait even longer. Openreach has shared with me its concerns that there is a shortfall in funding from the last spending review, meaning that there is a risk that the Government do not meet their 99% gigabit-coverage target by 2032, which is already an unacceptably long time for my constituents in remote rural areas to wait to be connected. It would be intolerable if it were to be delayed further.
Will the Minister clarify in his response whether he believes he has sufficient funding to meet the 99% target? When will the Government bring forward their statement of strategic priorities for Ofcom, which is a critical step to shape the next phase of the UK’s digital infrastructure journey? The Minister will know that the consultation on this ended in September; we await his Department’s response. This Government are quick to issue a consultation, but they seem rather slower to act.”
Just for some context on the impact of Government schemes on gigabit broadband coverage. As at the end of September 2025, over 1.3 million premises in rural and hard-to-reach areas across the UK had already been upgraded to gigabit networks through publicly subsidised programmes. In addition, over 1 million premises are now included in signed Project Gigabit contracts worth £2.4bn in total, although we’re expecting this to rise.
However, the suggestion above is that the revised target of 99% coverage by 2032 may also be missed, although the government’s representative in this week’s debate, Kanishka Narayan (MP for the Vale of Glamorgan), was quick to point out that “Openreach has not made that representation to me“.
The MP added that the “Government are squarely focused on reaching the 99% target, and we are doing all we can to make sure that all providers are in a place to do so. I am happy to engage with Openreach if it wants to make a representation to me“. Naturally ISPreview queried this with Openreach, which provided the following response.
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A spokesperson for Openreach said:
“Openreach welcomed the Government’s commitment to retain funding for Project Gigabit in the last spending review. BDUK is working constructively with industry on how the programme can help sustain the build momentum needed to reach the Government’s target of 99% gigabit coverage by 2032, and Openreach stands ready to work with Government to deliver that goal.
A failure to fund these upgrades as initially intended would put economic growth in these areas at risk, while increasing the taxpayer’s exposure if deployment takes longer as supply chains begin to be stood down.”
At present it’s not clear how much of a funding shortfall may actually exist and that will partly depend upon several uncertain factors, such as in terms of precisely how far commercial operators will deploy by 2032 (without recourse to public investment) and the same for those holding various contracts under the subsidised Project Gigabit scheme. The Building Delivery UK (BDUK) agency currently tracks future deployment plans for the next 3 years and anything past that tends to be more uncertain.
In addition, we’ve already seen a number of smaller alternative networks retreat from their Project Gigabit contracts (e.g. Freedom Fibre, Voneus, FullFibre Ltd.) and others may yet follow. Some of those will end up being absorbed into Openreach’s Cross-Regional (Type C) framework under the same scheme. But the more remote the area, the greater costs tend to rise – disproportionately so – until they fall out of economic viability.
If we consider the current contracts and delivery plans, then ISPreview can roughly estimate that the UK may be on course for around 95-97% coverage of gigabit-capable broadband by 2030; but there’s plenty of room for variability in that. The economic climate has changed a lot since Project Gigabit was founded in 2021 and not for the better, so what was once possible under the old budget may no longer be the case, hence the potential for a shortfall.
At the same time, we shouldn’t forget that Openreach’s own commercial target of reaching “up to” 30 million UK premises with full fibre (FTTP) by 2030 is currently being linked by the operator to the need for a favourable outcome from Ofcom’s forthcoming Telecoms Access Review 2026 (TAR). Suffice to say that there may be a mix of both industry and regulator negotiation, as well as real-world economics, at play in all this.
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The lengthy time horizon involved could also carry some political relevance, since it’s currently unclear whether the existing government would be either willing or able to pump more public investment into the project to ensure that the pace of build remains strong enough to reach the 2032 target. Such things may end up being perceived as a problem for the next government to tackle, which could mean delays. Time will tell.
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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From what we see every day in the field – these % coverage estimates are way out.
Data collected in OMR (open market reviews) include the inflated intentions of Altnets, who failed to deliver even when they were building!
The problem very much exists in Urban areas as well as Rural – more funding is going to be needed – 100%
Taxes are now so high that there is no money left to fund anything unless government cuts unproductive spending first. After which reducing the taxes on telecom services would IMO encourage investment.
Also regulation could be smarter. For example protect FTTP providers from competition in an area for a limited period as long as the incumbent serves all properties and their network can cope with the demand.
Agreed on tax cuts unfortunately communists want 100% taxes and the state to be in charge of everything so until a regime change comes it will only get worse
There is no need to block companies from working, the market always works. Most of them are no longer building anyway
People don’t realize how big the debt interest payments are and how much welfare/nhs budgets are ballooning. It is completely unsustainable. There is no money. Cityfibre can exist without taxpayers giving it more money
Taxes are too high, yet BT still made £1.3 billion profit last year.
We pay fewer taxes than all our neighbours and the state of our infrastructure and services is a direct result of this. Personal taxes have increased but are still lower than our European neighbours except for Ireland.
Wouldn’t it be better for these uneconomical areas of UK to just get some level of subsidises for Star link or satellite based internet as it currently quite expensive but will come down in price over the years.
Surely thats better than paying for expensive installs and worse the maintenance of these cables because they will all be overhead cables in rural areas. Tree falls etc… it will be a pain.
The ongoing running cost and repairs are typically paid for by the network operator.
Long term, fibre will be cheaper than satellite
it’s a good thing solar panels weren’t in mass production in the 50s because we’d have people calling for that to be used instead of the extensive universal electrification we benefit massively from.
As the other commenter says, fibre is best for the long term, and when you are the USO operator who has to maintain an ever further decrepit copper network then fibre becomes more compelling.
That’s not to say satellite won’t play a small part. BT recently announced a deal with Starlink but I would assume the numbers of premises involved to be pretty small, and probably offered when the customer balks at insane construction costs.
Would you want some of the most productive areas of this country that we rely upon to put food on our tables reliant on a system that is run by someone who has questionable ethics and is from the biggest disrupting country in the world currently ? I know I wouldn’t. Broadband and the transfer of UK data is part of our countries critical infrastructure and should remain that way for all.
Part of the problem is that the scope of the national infrastructure investment program was increased, but the funding was not also increased in proportion to the increased funding requirements. It is also worth noting that the infrastructure program extended beyond the end of the current Parliament, so the government, assuming it will not form the next government, has been making unfunded commitments it will not be responsible for delivering.
UK self sufficiency only by musk/starlink, is this a crime drama.
How many fibre rings need to go past a premisis, can’t we have just one, or perhaps just 2 for a bit of diversification/resilliency. How many ‘suppliers’ (or is that taxpater parasites does the UK need, holistic UK net or a mess of private fragnets, built with taxpayers money with no ROI (someone did mention ‘Investment’..) Might as well put the national grid out to ‘altnets’ along with gas and water (and isn’t that working out well, for teh public).
“RFS too costly to deploy” ? – Sattelite will and is becoming the major driving force defactor in the hard to reach rural communities driving scalable quicker economic returns, with faster penetration, & easier to deploy coverage – Versus Uncompetitive – uneconomic, delayed, Impractable & wasteful fttp overbuilds and premises too costly to connect.
How is it overbuild when there is no fibre there?
Do you think customers of satellite-based broadband services are paying realistic prices when those services, like many AltNets, are funded by the owners and are not operating on sustainable business models?
The rural communities are the one who are being left out . Due to the cost of building the infrastructure. Some altnets have the money but when people in the rural part of an area they have won there is no build dates . My farther in-law lives on a farm Quickline won the area but still no build dates for the surrounding area
That is only partially true.
Many residents of MDUs in urban areas are also missing out on fibre connections.
The cost of Starlink may be coming down but £35pm for up to 100Mbps is still poor value compared to fibre.
It seems unlikely that Starlink will ever be attractive in areas with comprehensive fibre coverage.
Mostly rural areas without fibre can benefit but Starlink will face increasing competition as fibre slowly increases it’s reach.
Several people have gone with it in my area but fibre will arrive here soon. After this the Starlink presence will be gone.
This picture will be repeated both here and abroad which will make the product even more niche than it already is.
Add on the imminent arrival of satellite competition and it is far from clear that satellite is even viable in the longer term.
The final Starlink constellation will consist of around 12,500 satellites. Just to keep this maintained will need 100+ Falcon 9 launches per year with about 20 satellites on each. This is currently about 2/3 of all SpaceX Falcon 9 launches.
Even with costs kept down with reusable rocketry it’s still very expensive.
Alternatively, you can bury some fibre, which is also expensive, but you can use it for decades without having to periodically launch bits of it into space.
I doubt that the prices for satellite broadband services are based upon sustainable business models, rather like many of the Altnets.