Gigabit gains pace in UK
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Editor
| 14 November 2022
The number of UK premises gaining access to gigabit broadband continues to grow as research from Point Topic has revealed that while 30% of UK premises did not have access to gigabit capable broadband by August 2022, fibre-to-the premises (FTTP) network coverage had reached 38%.
OPenreach Full Fibre 14June2022
The analysis was based on the broadband availability dataset from research firm ThinkPoint which included 1.7 million postcodes.

In 27% of local authorities the FTTP coverage was lower than 20% of premises. It was 50% or higher in 23% of local authorities. Across the UK, around 1.6 million premises had access to two or more independent fibre ISPs and more than 800K premises could choose between three, with Peterborough being top of the charts in this category. Gigabit broadband adoption rate varied between 3% and 55% among various ISPs.

Looking at gigabit providers, the study found 851,000 additional FTTP premises delivered by Openreach in the four months to the end of August 2022, which equates to a total FTTP network coverage for the BT-owned broadband provision division of 7.8 million premises, 24% of all in the UK. By contrast, the study found only 108,000 additional Virgin Media O2 gigabit premises between the end of April 2022 and August 2022 on top of their 16 million premises already covered.

The Point Topic study also found that independent providers have continued their rollouts at pace. CityFibre was leading the way with 1.5 million FTTP premises covered by the end of August 2022. Next was Hyperoptic followed with over 700,000 premises passed, closely followed by Community Fibre with almost the same and then Gigaclear and Netomnia (YouFibre) both approaching a quarter of a million.