Biannual April 2026 Progress Update on BT’s 10Mbps UK Broadband USO
Internet provider BT has today published the biannual (April 2026) progress update on their delivery of Ofcom’s somewhat limited 10Mbps Universal Service Obligation (USO) for broadband. The provider has so far helped to build a USO connection to over 9,089 premises (up from 8,553 in Oct 2025) – using FTTP, with 461 further builds in-progress (up sharply from 186).
The USO is a legally-binding and industry-funded obligation that falls on BT across the UK and KCOM in Hull. In short, people living in areas where they can’t yet receive a 10Mbps or faster download speed, and aren’t expected to be covered by such a network in the next 12-months, can request a service capable of 10Mbps+ (1Mbps+ upload) from the aforementioned internet providers.
A cost sharing model also applies here, which means that the providers will “calculate the total excess cost of the build and divide that between the eligible premises. If that amount is below £5,000 per premises (on top of the £3,400), we’ll automatically split the costs“. But some areas can still end up costing hundreds of thousands of pounds, even up to £1-2m, and would thus find the USO route to be unviable (here and here).
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Ofcom states that 44,000 UK premises (under 0.2%) currently fall into the USO gap (i.e. those outside of suitable fixed line, fixed wireless or 4G/5G mobile cover) or c.340,000 premises (1%) if you exclude wireless solutions. But the regulator predicts the current 44k figure could fall to 36k by the end of 2026, mostly as a result of upgrades delivered via ongoing publicly funded schemes (gigabit vouchers, project gigabit contracts etc.).
Just to be clear about this. Many of those who pursue the USO option via BT say they were offered 4G (mobile broadband) connections via EE instead, but those actually considered to have been delivered under the USO itself usually get Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP). Commercial builds of the latter have also helped to shrink the USO gap (tackling the first c.80%+ of the country).
The gap will continue to shrink as both commercial and subsidised builds (e.g. the Gov’s £5bn Project Gigabit programme) expand. The government are also still exploring how best to reach those who live in “Very Hard to Reach” areas with even faster speeds – roughly equating to the same sort of area as the USO is focused upon – and at the same time they were due to review the USO itself (here), which could lead to changes. But this work seems to have stalled since 2024’s change in government.
BT’s April 2026 Broadband USO Report
The latest statistics continue to show that USO delivery is a slow process (e.g. in Oct 2023 there were 185 builds in progress, then 265 in April 2024, 215 in Oct 2024, 349 in Apr 2025, 186 in Oct 2025 and now 461). We suspect this may be a combination of factors, such as a lack of consumer familiarity with the USO (apply for it here), new services like Starlink becoming available, the shrinking area of USO eligibility and the fact that the policy may be running into the limitations of economically viable deliverability. But it is notable that the figures for April 2026 are more than double those of the last report.
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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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BT & KCom have to provide, why not VM/Nexfibre/Netomina, are they still not big enough?
There are elements of market dominance involved here, with respect to Ofcom’s choices, and the fact that no other providers were willing to take on the legal and financial implications of doing such a USO.
USO was formulated in a pre-5G, pre-satellite age, and needs to be reformulated.
And the speed minimum needs to increase
The concept still needed to keep up pressure on Openreach and KCOM to progress FTTP (exceptionally FTTC and FWA) installation.
The USO “remedy” needs to be more customer centric. What the customer cares about is reasonable bandwidth, latency and reliability now at a competitive cost, not at some potential future date (via a fixed connection).
So Openreach/KCOM should be required to supply 4G/5G/satellite connections billed at prevailing market FTTP rates for lowest available FTTP tier (100Gbs) or highest FTTC tier (70Gbs) with a capped additional rental cost for the optional separate legacy landline. This should include a continuous monitoring solution available to custoemr (e.g. Cisco Thousandeyes fka Samknows) with an automatic refund to customer if bandwidth/reliability/latency of the wireless alternative does not achieve a SLA comparable to industry norms for FTTP.
The operational costs of the wireless will me more than the operational costs of a FTTP service, so there is still some pressure on Openreach/KCOM to eventually replace the subsidised wireless service with FTTP.
Overall this approach is also less bureaucratic, and the current bureaucracy does not add any value to the customer in most cases.
Where I wrote Gbs of course I meant Mbs (clear from the context).
Thinking gremlins….
why on earth should any ISP commit to any of that faff when they don’t do this for their non-USO customers? BT and KCOM would never agree to it and nor should they be forced to, especially as altnets continue to cherry pick away.
The point of a broadband USO is to offer a basic service that allows them to do the kinds of things that they previously did with a USO telephone service, such as online banking and access to government services. It isn’t to provide (sub)urban equivalence.
BT (not Openreach, this is an important distinction) already uses FTTP to achieve their USO obligation in almost all cases, so the target minimum doesn’t really matter – customers who get USO FTTP can have 1.8 gig if they want – but it does allow the flexibility for BT to provide a 4G/5G solution (or BT’s own version of Starlink at some point in the future) for those requests where FTTP would be astronomically expensive.
Why should they be required to do this?
In the days of the telephony USO those remote lines were subsidised by the very great number of cheaper, shorter lines. In today’s competitive market that ability to subsidise is much less, and providing service to customer below cost becomes very tricky with regards to the competition act.
Many altnets would complain that openreach was acting to steal customers from them by providing a cheaper than cost service.
Any subsidy should be funded by industry overall.
The current USO remedy is also a lot of faff, to deliver an equally competitive (disruptive to others) offer in a way that is worse for the customer in the short term.
And the subsidy should be limited to premises where domestic grade customer would need to bear an excessive monthly cost to achieve a reasonable minimum service (likely where satellite is only option; 4G/5G service is already usually commercially competitive where available).
Businesses or customers wanting an enhanced service would be expected to directly contract at a higher cost, no USO subsidy.
If impact to broader competitive landscape is a real concern then maybe the subsidy should be at the wholesale level, i.e. the connection is made available at wholesale at the prevailing Openreach FTTP wholesale cost (e.g. allowing any ISP that has a wider wholesale agreement with Openreach to resell a subsidised “remedy” connection just like any other Openreach connection), which is a similar competitive outcome to current USO remedy.
Noted (if I understand correctly) that alt-nets can’t take part in current USO process (to subsidise a build out if they could deliver a cheaper or quicker outcome for the customer); likely that would need a change to a more industry-wide financial pooling process for payments in and build subsidies out, but that risks increasing prices to all customers in the same way that green levies and subsidies increases electric costs for all.
Everyone paying a tiny bit more to cover the very great costs of those in scope for USO is exactly how it is supposed to work. All money spent by telcos is ultimately funded by customers. Why should the customers of only one or two telcos fund that obligation?
Your electricity analogy doesn’t work. The tiny subsidy compared to the enormous and ever increasing costs – direct and wider – for fossil fuels is like a smoker complaining about the cost of matches.
10mb isn’t enough anymore.
They should have aimed at 50+mb , wouldnt have involved much more cabling a few hundred meters.
Plus Starlink etc makes most of this obsolete now.
I’d somehow rather manage a life offline rather than give money to him
I get approx 2mbps
Fibre build date keeps being pushed back
Govt site says 2029
Openreach says we’re working in your area (lol)
I’ve had a 4G connections for years, but the lag is unuseable
so have you filed a USO request with BT?