Home
 » ISP News » 
Sponsored Links

Jan 2026 Contract Delivery Progress for UK Project Gigabit Broadband Rollout

Monday, Jan 26th, 2026 (3:41 pm) - Score 40
Project-Gigabit-UK-Gov-Investment-Scheme-2025

The Government’s Building Digital UK agency has published their January 2026 update on the delivery progress of contracts that have been awarded under their £5bn Project Gigabit broadband rollout scheme. The update reveals that some 202,270 contracted premises (up from 183,380 in Dec 2025) have so far been covered out of a planned total of 1,002,500.

The figures in this update are not directly comparable to the figures published in BDUK’s general statistics release. This is because today’s report tracks the number of contracted premises to which a supplier has delivered a gigabit-capable connection under the main gigabit subsidy scheme (GIS), whereas the official statistics include the number of premises that have also received a gigabit-capable connection as a result of any public BDUK subsidy (i.e. that covers other schemes too, like gigabit vouchers and past contracts that pre-date Project Gigabit).

NOTE: Project Gigabit aims to help extend gigabit broadband (1000Mbps+) ISP networks to “nationwide” coverage (c.99% of UK premises) by 2032, focusing mostly on the final 10-20% in hard-to-reach areas. Some 89.6% of premises can already access such a network (here), with Ofcom forecasting between 91% and 97% by January 2028 (here).

So far, most of the country’s gigabit-capable broadband coverage has been delivered by commercial deployments (predominantly focused on urban and semi-urban areas),while Project Gigabit focuses on the final bits that they fail to reach. The project has already committed most of its budget up to 2030, but there are still some contracts yet to be awarded and others that have been scaled-back or switched suppliers (here, here, here and here).

Advertisement

Otherwise, it’s worth remembering that all of the listed contracts were awarded at different times and are thus at very different stages of development (some started several years apart). A few of the listed contracts have already completed their delivery, such as Wessex Internet’s roll-out for North Dorset and GoFibre’s roll-outs for County Durham and North Northumberland.

Project Gigabit – Contracted Premises and Built Premises by Contract (Jan 2026)

Contract Supplier Contracted premises Built contracted premises
Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire and Milton Keynes CityFibre 21,030 2,740
Bucks, Herts and East of Berks CityFibre 19,090 3,430
CO1 Lancashire, West Berkshire, Staffordshire, Surrey, Hertfordshire, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire Openreach 54,340 8,330
CO2 Devon, Mid Wales and South East Wales Openreach 42,270 5,340
CO3 North Herefordshire, North Wales, Shropshire and South West Wales Openreach 52,060 80
CO4 South Devon, Mid Devon and North Somerset Openreach 37,110 700
CO5 Essex and North East England Openreach 24,710 300
CO6 Rest of Scotland Openreach 65,070 340
CO7 Worcestershire Openreach 22,600 10
Cambridgeshire CityFibre 39,070 8,210
Central Cornwall Wildanet 9,810 6,880
Cornwall and Isle of Scilly Wildanet 14,430 2,680
Cumbria Fibrus 53,540 27,980
Derbyshire Connect Fibre 12,500 770
Dorset and South Somerset Wessex internet 7,240 1,700
Durham GoFibre 4,440 4,440
East Gloucestershire Gigaclear 3,550 840
East and West Sussex CityFibre 41,940 2,960
Hampshire CityFibre 55,570 5,700
Kent CityFibre 46,080 1,940
Leicestershire and Warwickshire CityFibre 38,230 7,490
Lincolnshire and East Riding Quickline 47,800 13,270
New Forest Wessex internet 15,120 9,110
Norfolk CityFibre 48,890 11,530
North Dorset Wessex internet 6,480 6,480
North East Staffordshire Connect Fibre 5,960 1,690
North Oxfordshire Gigaclear 4,180 3,220
North Shropshire Freedom Fibre 3,410 3,410
Northern North Yorkshire Quickline 33,810 6,660
Northumberland GoFibre 3,830 3,830
Nottinghamshire and West Lincolnshire CityFibre 27,820
South Oxfordshire Gigaclear 5,310 2,390
South West Cornwall Wildanet 11,120 6,350
South Wiltshire Wessex internet 18,790 4,800
South Yorkshire Quickline 13,290 7,150
Suffolk CityFibre 65,710 15,940
West and Parts of North Yorkshire Quickline 26,310 13,610
TOTAL   1,002,500 202,270

Take note that CityFibre’s progress under the £58.6m (public subsidy) contract for rural parts of Nottinghamshire and West Lincolnshire (Lot 10) needs to be taken in context, since Connexin originally held this until only a few months ago when they were acquired by CityFibre. Connexin only began the build phase at the end of 2024 (here), thus its delivery has been stuck in limbo due to that consolidation.

The above is an example of why it’s important to understand the context behind each contract before judging delivery progress, since a face-value assessment will overlook key realities. Speaking of which, some of the contracted figures may differ from the original announcements, which reflects the usual contract modifications (i.e. the scope of delivery can increase or decrease, such as due to commercial builds by other operators going further than expected or builds costing more than expected etc.).

Advertisement

For some extra context, you can check out the previous figures for December 2025 (here).

Share with Twitter
Share with Linkedin
Share with Facebook
Share with Reddit
Share with Pinterest
Mark-Jackson
By Mark Jackson
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 .
Next Article
Search ISP News
Search ISP Listings
Search ISP Reviews
Comments
2 Responses

Advertisement

  1. Avatar photo cr3 says:

    Many congratulations to the single engineer CityFibre has building out the Kent lot.

  2. Avatar photo Chris says:

    Cityfibre promised in 2024 to extend their Norfolk build to reach properties in North West Norfolk. It was in the local news and our MP made a big deal about it. So far, nothing – no activity, no announcements, no build plans. It would be nice to know even if the project was scrapped since I know there are a lot of us Starlink users out here!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

NOTE: Your comment may not appear instantly (it may take several hours) due to static caching and moderation checks by the anti-spam system. Please be patient. We will reject comments that spam, troll, post via known fake IP/proxy servers or fall foul of our Online Safety and Content Policy.
Javascript must be enabled to post (most browsers do this automatically)

Privacy Notice: Please note that news comments are anonymous, which means that we do NOT require you to enter any real personal details to post a message and display names can be almost anything you like (provided they do not contain offensive language or impersonate a real person's legal name). By clicking to submit a post you agree to storing your entries for comment content, display name, IP and email in our database, for as long as the post remains live.

Only the submitted name and comment will be displayed in public, while the rest will be kept private (we will never share this outside of ISPreview, regardless of whether the data is real or fake). This comment system uses submitted IP, email and website address data to spot abuse and spammers. All data is transferred via an encrypted (https secure) session.
Cheap BIG ISPs for 100Mbps+
Community Fibre UK ISP Logo
100Mbps
Gift: None
Vodafone UK ISP Logo
Vodafone £22.00
150Mbps
Gift: None
Virgin Media UK ISP Logo
Virgin Media £23.99
264Mbps
Gift: None
Plusnet UK ISP Logo
Plusnet £24.99
145Mbps
Gift: £150 Reward Card
Youfibre UK ISP Logo
Youfibre £24.99
200Mbps
Gift: None
Large Availability | View All
Promotion
Cheap Unlimited Mobile SIMs
Talkmobile UK ISP Logo
Talkmobile £16.95
Contract: 1 Month
Data: Unlimited
iD Mobile UK ISP Logo
iD Mobile £17.00
Contract: 24 Months
Data: Unlimited
ASDA Mobile UK ISP Logo
ASDA Mobile £19.00
Contract: 24 Months
Data: Unlimited
Smarty UK ISP Logo
Smarty £20.00
Contract: 1 Month
Data: Unlimited
O2 UK ISP Logo
O2 £21.24
Contract: 24 Months
Data: Unlimited
Cheapest ISPs for 100Mbps+
Gigaclear UK ISP Logo
Gigaclear £17.00
200Mbps
Gift: None
Community Fibre UK ISP Logo
100Mbps
Gift: None
toob UK ISP Logo
toob £19.50
150Mbps
Gift: None
Vodafone UK ISP Logo
Vodafone £22.00
150Mbps
Gift: None
Beebu UK ISP Logo
Beebu £23.00
100 - 160Mbps
Gift: None
Large Availability | View All
Promotion
Sponsored

Copyright © 1999 to Present - ISPreview.co.uk - All Rights Reserved - Terms , Privacy and Cookie Policy , Links , Website Rules , Contact