UK Full-Fiber Broadband Coverage Jumps From 12% to 78% in Five Years

The UK has transformed its broadband infrastructure in five years -- with full-fiber coverage jumping from 12% of properties in January 2020 to more than 78% by 2025, according to communications regulator Ofcom and ThinkBroadband data. Northern Ireland leads with 96% of premises in postcodes served with full-fiber connections.

The rollout accelerated after Ofcom's May 2021 regulatory framework gave other providers access to BT's Openreach ducts and poles while promising the company regulatory certainty through a "fair bet" approach that avoided price caps. The framework sparked investment from alternative networks, or "altnets," which increased homes passed from 8.2 million in 2022 to 16.4 million by 2025.

Great but

[jrnvk]

UK residential internet and wireless service is still far behind the rest of the developed world. More work needs to be done.

Re:

[Richard_at_work]

Yup, moved to NZ from the UK and I went from 80Mbit fibre-to-the-cabinet in the UK (and only getting around 50MBit to the house in reality) to getting gigabit fibre to the premises in NZ - and the NZ offering had no caps, got on average 950MBit plus sustained, and was half the price of the UK offering.

Re:

[beelsebob]

I mean, fair anecdote, but I get 1Gb/s symetric fibre to the premises here in the UK. Without data, it's hard to make the argument you're trying to.

Re:

[Richard_at_work]

Yes its an anecdote, and you get 1Gb/s now, sure.

This was 8 years ago - and gigabit fibre to the premises was not new in NZ when I moved here.

And in the UK I lived in a large city, while in NZ I live in a rural town.

But its good to hear that you are finally catching up with NZ.

Re: Great but

[subie]

That's crazy, my old little town in southern Kansas had fiber to every house

Re: Great but

[kenh]

Wait, I've been told for decades that America was the worst with regard to broadband coverage? What happened?

How LARGE is England?

[p51d007]

The entire country would fit in what? 2 states in America? Love all these "this country has better/faster internet than the USA" stories. Yeah, and most of those countries fit within 1-2 states in America. In other words, we are SPREAD OUT.

Re:

[ceoyoyo]

Not really. The population weighted density of the US and Europe are fairly similar, although England is on the high side, similar to California and Nevada.

Population weighted density is the correct metric, not population density. Nobody is proposing running fibre to every square metre.

Re:

[MacMann]

The entire country would fit in what? 2 states in America? Love all these "this country has better/faster internet than the USA" stories. Yeah, and most of those countries fit within 1-2 states in America. In other words, we are SPREAD OUT.

I was going to post much the same if nobody else did.

Complaints of the slow spread of infrastructure in the USA are usually in matters concerning cellular service or EV chargers but internet access will certainly rank high on the list too. As I see it there's two things that slow the spread of infrastructure in the USA besides how spread out the population centers are in the USA.

One thing slowing down infrastructure expansion is government interference. We have governments that love to hand out subsidies

Re:

[algaeman]

Great Britain is roughly the size and population of the northeast states + Maryland + DC. I don't think the fiber coverage in that area is anywhere near 78%. I'd say it is much closer to that original 12%, and there's 2 companies that are making a lot of money keeping it that way.