April 2026 Contract Progress for UK Project Gigabit Broadband Rollout

The Government’s Building Digital UK (BDUK) agency has today released their April 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 250,000 contracted premises (up from 227,310 in Mar 2026) have so far been covered out of a planned total of 1,047,200.

The figures in this update are not directly comparable to the figures published in BDUK’s general quarterly statistics releases. 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 Infrastructure Subsidy (GIS) programme, whereas the general statistics also include the number of premises that have received a gigabit-capable connection as a result of any public / BDUK subsidy (i.e. that covers other schemes too, like gigabit vouchers and 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 (usually rural areas). 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 (e.g. here, here, here, here and here).

Otherwise, it’s worth remembering that these contracts were all 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 build for North Dorset and GoFibre’s roll-outs for County Durham and North Northumberland.

Take note that in April 2026 there was a new addition to the list in the shape of Openreach’s contract for Cheshire (here).

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

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 last year 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 and future progress remains unclear.

In addition, some of CityFibre’s other contracts also appear to be struggling to make progress, which is a concern. We recently raised these issues with CityFibre (here) and they assured us that the operator “remains committed to our role in Project Gigabit and will have the resources needed to deliver.”

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 often 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.).

For some extra context, you can check out the previous figures for March 2026 (here).