Jan 2026 Contract Delivery Progress for UK Project Gigabit Broadband Rollout
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).
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).
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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.).
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For some extra context, you can check out the previous figures for December 2025 (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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Many congratulations to the single engineer CityFibre has building out the Kent lot.
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!
I understood the additional areas were extra contracts that came after the initial deployment, so 2030 onwards
It’s a shame that there is yet no update to the North Shropshire contract. It was cancelled in June last year and so many people are waiting updates with no news.
Our village had Freedom Fibre install poles and hang fibre from them, only to have the contract cancelled before the final install. We are now in limbo, and surrounded by other areas where Freedom Fibre snd OpenReach have deployed to within a few hundred meters of hour village.
We did try and get OoenReach to restart a community fibre campaign we had run before these contracts were allocated, but they have refused and are ignoring us now.
With no 5g and very poor mobile signal in general, we are stuck with FTTC or StarLink for the foreseeable future.
It would just be nice to get an update from BDUK on what is happening and what the timeline looks like.
It would be interesting to know whether these figures have been obtained from.
As an eager local man, I have fact checked Connect Fibre’s figures for Derbyshire (which I believe is actually two contracts, one for the north and one for the south, not an individual contract) and using the available UPRN’s from the bid document and cross referencing against their website postcode checker for availability, it’s more than the number advertised above.
And the opposite for City Fibre in some areas (Cambridge)…
It’s a numbers game … but who is the real winner.
Where* the figures …
Not surprised that Wildanet’s numbers are so poor. Physical works were done like a year ago in an area I’m acutely aware of. Boxes on some but not all poles. Website still claims “no plans”.
Should have just given the money to Openreach anyway given that most of the area already has FTTP (and no doubt to be overbuilt by Wildanet as they reach the FTTC properties they were subsidised for). Probably would have got it sooner and with far better choice of ISP and pricing.