UK full-fibre broadband roll-out of continues apace
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Joseph O'Halloran
| 10 October 2022
As the number of homes with access to it jumps by more than 50% in a year, 37% of UK households can now get full-fibre broadband capable of delivering download speeds of up to 1 Gbps, representing a reach of 11 million premises, according to the latest data from Ofcom.
Ofcom growth full fibre broadband 10Oct2022
The Connected Nations autumn update from the UKs’ communications and broadcast UK regulator took data from 58 fixed line operators and 26 fixed wireless access providers- such as wireless internet service providers and mobile network operators - to compile availability figures as of May 2022.
Superfast broadband coverage across the UK, that is offering a download speed of 30 Mbps or more, remained at 96%, with Northern Ireland seeing an increase of a percentage point in superfast coverage. The number of premises unable to get decent broadband, when factoring in fixed wireless and fixed line, dropped from 99,500 to 83,000 premises since Ofcom’s Spring update and those unable to achieve decent broadband over a fixed line has increased from 506,0001 to 513,000 over the same period.

The availability of broadband capable of delivering gigabit 2 speeds for consumers continues to improve at a rapid pace, with nearly 20.2 million UK homes (68%) now able to access these faster services, up from 19.3 million homes (66%) reported in the regulator’s update in Spring 2022. This was said to have been driven by the continued rollout of full-fibre broadband by many network operators, both well established and new market entrants. The study noted that Virgin Media O2’s upgrade programme has now concluded and the rate of growth of this coverage metric has slowed compared with deployment in previous period.

More than a third (37%) of homes have access to full fibre services, with coverage now at just over 11 million, up from 9.6 million (33%) reported in Spring 2022 . This growth was driven predominantly through deployments by the larger fibre infrastructure operators but supported by a number of smaller providers across the UK serving individual communities and regions. Some of these deployments benefit from a range of public sector funding schemes which we outline below.

Of those switching a communications service in the last two years, the study found that finding a cheaper deal was the main reason for doing so, while those that did not switch cited high satisfaction with their current provider as a reason for staying put.

Despite the added momentum of service rollout over the last, one of the key, and hotly contested, issues of the UK broadband market has been accessibility in so-called hard-to-reach locations. The Connected Nations autumn updateConnected Nations autumn update found that those in rural UK locations were almost twice as likely to be dissatisfied with the reliability of their internet service (15% vs. 8%) compared with their urban counterparts. When it came to mobile reception, this was a factor of four, namely 12% vs. 3%.