EU Reveals 2026 Gigabit Broadband and 5G Coverage Progress vs UK

The European Commission (EC) has published their annual 2026 study of broadband and mobile network coverage in Europe, which reveals how the EU’s fixed gigabit broadband (FTTP and Hybrid Fibre Coax) and 5G mobile networks compare across all of its 27 countries. We compare this with the United Kingdom below.

Just to recap. The EU’s main goal for digital infrastructure, which is very similar to the UK, is for every European household to have access to gigabit (1000Mbps+) connectivity by the end of 2030. The new report, which is largely based on data from last year (mid-2025), is intended to help gauge the progress toward achieving that and other related goals.

The EU’s Broadband and Mobile Targets (“Digital Decade“)

The previous vision for 2025 relied on three main strategic objectives:

➤ Gigabit connectivity for all of the main socio-economic drivers;

➤ uninterrupted 5G coverage for all urban areas and major terrestrial transport paths;

➤ access to connectivity offering at least 100 Mbps for all European households.

The ambition of the Digital Decade is that by 2030:

➤ all European households are covered by a Gigabit network (e.g. DOCSIS 3.1 + FTTP);

➤ all populated areas are covered by 5G (at least).

By comparison, the UK’s £5bn Project Gigabit programme currently aims to extend gigabit-capable broadband to reach around 99% of UK premises by 2032 (recently delayed from the original goal of 2030). The public funding for this is focused upon aiding the final 10-20% of hardest to reach premises, where commercial deployments may struggle.

According to Ofcom’s latest data to January 2026 (here), some 98% of UK premises can access a 30Mbps+ (“superfast“) connection (unchanged from last year), while 89% (up from 86%) are able to access gigabit broadband (via FTTP and DOCSIS 3.1+) and that falls to 82% (up from 74%) when only looking at “full fibre” FTTP. Take note that, in the UK, DOCSIS 3.1 largely reflects Virgin Media’s urban Hybrid Fibre Coax (cable) network.

As for mobile networks, over 99% of UK premises (outdoor) have access to 4G (unchanged) and between 76-94% of premises (outdoor) can access 5G (up from 62-85%) – falling to just 73% when looking at geographic 5G coverage from at least one operator (up from 62%). However, it’s important to stress that the EU’s comparative data below is about 6 months older than Ofcom’s data above.

Overall, the EU is now in a roughly similar sort of place to the United Kingdom, with total FTTP coverage of 74.13% (up from 69.24% last year), gigabit (VHCN) broadband coverage of 85.54% (up from 82.49%) and 5G population coverage of 96.79% (up from 94.35%). But we do have to remember that quite a few EU states have been building FTTP, at scale, for 5-10 years longer than the UK, although we’re clearly catching up and even exceeding quite a few countries.

The main focus of the EU’s report is on 5G and gigabit / VHCN (FTTP + DOCSIS 3.1) coverage, with the differences between EU states and the UK becoming much clearer in these areas once we drill down to the individual country level. In both cases, the UK would now reside in the middle to upper half of the tables below (not too long ago we would have been around the bottom).

The other thing to consider is the split between rural and urban coverage. In the UK, some 62% of rural premises have access to a gigabit-capable broadband network (up from 57%), which drops to 61% for FTTP (up from 55%). By comparison, only 62.6% of EU households living in rural areas were reached by fibre in 2025, up from 58.8% in 2024 (+6.5%).

The full report contains a lot more data.

Broadband Coverage in Europe 2026 (State of Digital Decade)
https://digital-decade-desi.digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/datasets/desi/charts