The pace of the full-fibre roll-outs continues and the point increase since 65% has taken 3 weeks and 4 days. The biggest contributor to that growth has been Openreach, but nexfibre and CityFibre are also busy and once you add the around 100 other alt-nets we are keeping nice and busy tracking everyone.
Gigabit capable which is the mixture of Virgin Media DOCSIS 3.1 and the many full-fibre networks is sitting at a higher 82.53% with those extra 2.5 points needed to reach the Government target expected to happen on 9th September 2024 if the pace of the last nine months continues.
UK Full-Fibre at 66.01% is lower than the Gigabit footprint, since it throws out the coax/fibre hybrid network and our current prediction for that to reach 85% is 6th August 2025.
The list of shame, which is the ten local authority areas with the least amount of FTTP (to see the full list of councils, head over to our council list), has been updated to:
- Shetland Islands 5.80%, no change since 14th April 2024
- Na h-Eileanan an Iar 6.39%, no change since 15th March 2024
- Isles of Scilly 9.49% FTTP, no change since 15th March 2024
- Orkney Islands 10.83%, an increase of 0.2 since 14th April 2024
- West Dunbartonshire 10.94%, an increase of 0.02 since 14th April 2024
- Harlow District 13.67%, no change since 14th April 2024
- Argyll and Bute 16.87%, an increase of 0.78 since 14th April 2024
- Perth and Kinross 18.36%, an increase of 0.61 since 14th April 2024
- Telford and Wrekin 20.69% an increase of 0.15 since 14th April 2024
- South Tyneside District 21.88%, an increase of 1.05 since 14th April 2024
No new entrants or moving around the list, and while these are the ten worst council areas there is at least some activity.
Overlapping networks are a common story, for example we are seeing a good amount of nexfibre appearing as ready for service in Milton Keynes where there is already a good mixture of Openreach and CityFibre full-fibre services.
- 6,534,323 premises (20.19% of the UK) with two or more FTTP networks available
- 733,858 premises (2.27%) with three or more FTTP networks available
- 44,471 premises (0.14%) with four FTTP networks available
- 3,402 premises (0.01%) with five different FTTP networks available
While the 1 in 5 premises with two or more FTTP networks seems a waste, having competition is important for the long term, since if the UK ends up with one monopoly FTTP network in large areas of the country even if the current management is soft and cuddly there will eventually be an asset stripper who cares nothing about customers but just the profit margins.
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“While the 1 in 5 premises with two or more FTTP networks seems a waste, having competition is important for the long term, since if the UK ends up with one monopoly FTTP network in large areas of the country even if the current management is soft and cuddly there will eventually be an asset stripper who cares nothing about customers but just the profit margins.”
Not sure about this, I think more people would benefit if providers focussed on building in areas which currently don’t have FTTP rather than overbuilding. Competition should come after availability not before…