UK government confirms £5BN full fibre broadband plan
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Joseph O'Halloran
| 12 March 2020

On a day where headlines and spending priorities in the 2020 UK Budget statement were focussed on the Coronavirus, newly appointed UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak has reaffirmed his government’s promise to accelerate gigabit broadband roll-out across the country.

In July 2019, Prime Minister Boris Johnson pledged that he would work towards “delivering full-fibre [broadband] to every home in the land” by 2025 and three months later the ruling Conservative Party committed £5 billion of public funding to support the roll-out of full-fibre, 5G and other gigabit-capable networks to the hardest-to-reach 20% of the UK, that is rural and non-metropolitan areas that had traditionally been underserved as regards to communications infrastructures.

Sunak has announced that the government will fulfil its promise to make funding available to develop gigabit broadband roll-out across the UK, and the Government revealed that as part of more than £1 billion that it has already committed to next-generation digital infrastructure, the next seven areas that have successfully bid for funding from the third wave of the Local Full Fibre Networks Challenge Fund will be: North of Tyne (to receive £12 million), South Wales (£12 million), Tay Cities (£6.7 million), Pembrokeshire (£4 million), Plymouth (£3 million), Essex and Hertfordshire (£2.1 million) and East Riding of Yorkshire (£1 million).

The Budget statement also revealed that the UK Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport will soon publish a consultation response that will confirm the government’s intention to legislate to ensure that new-build homes come with gigabit-capable broadband. It also noted that the government’s existing superfast broadband programme has shifted its focus to delivering gigabit-capable broadband and has already delivered full fibre to more than 370,000 premises. Also, more than 100 schools in rural areas are due to receive full-fibre broadband in the next 12 months under the Rural Gigabit Connectivity programme.

The funding commitment comes hot on the heels of a major fibre deployment announcements by Virgin Media and BT. On 4 March, cableco Virgin reformed its partnership model to provide a one-stop-shop for the planning, expansion and maintenance of its next-generation gigabit network across the UK, awarding five-year contracts worth £500 million to six national partners to manage the delivery and maintenance of its gigabit-capable network. Its plan is to see gigabit fibre connectivity delivered to more than 15 million UK homes in less than 24 months.

For its part, incumbent telco BT is claiming to be on the verge of becoming the country's fastest home broadband provider in more places than any another after announcing the launch of a new gigabit service in March 2020. The service will form part of a new range of next generation Full Fibre plans — designed to offer consumers average speeds up to 25 times faster than Superfast fibre — and will be available initially to more than two million households across the UK.