Is Westminster the most connected London Borough?
Westminster Council has a commitment to deliver full fibre broadband to all council properties in the borough by the end of 2021. Which sounds good, but will leave numerous non council owned homes and business buildings potentiallyt missing out.
Over the past few years, we have enabled fibre broadband deployment quicker than anywhere in London. Westminster has gone from near the bottom of the broadband league tables to now the most connected borough in the capital, which is an outstanding achievement. I’m proud to say that as part of the Connect Westminster initiative, we have been able to ensure more businesses have connectivity and have supplied our most vulnerable families with laptops to assist with education, work, and groceries.
Cllr Paul Swaddle, Westminster City Council Member for Finance and Smart City
The headline of most connected borough is based on the latest Ofcom Connected Nations data which is saying the City of Westminster is at 56.1% FTTP coverage. Our own data has the borough at 53.52% and it is likely that a lot of the difference is down to us not recorded leased lines in our data, so lots of business buildings will show as FTTP in the Ofcom data but not in our data.
While no one will fight against the notion that full fibre coverage is a good metric to aim for universal or near universal availability, at this point in time the availability of other slower broadband types is of paramount importance, i.e. what a small business or resident can order today.
The full set of London Boroughs and the key broadband metrics based on our availability data is below, the table is ordered by availability of full fibre:
|
London Borough All figures are % of premises | Superfast 30 Mbps and faster | Ultrafast 100 Mbps and faster | Full Fibre/FTTP | Gigabit FTTP and DOCSIS 3.1 | Under 10 Mbps |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tower Hamlets | 94.27 | 67.93 | 53.87 | 64.32 | 0.3 |
| City of Westminster | 91.96 | 69.16 | 53.52 | 61.95 | 0 |
| Barking and Dagenham | 99.17 | 95.59 | 52.67 | 95.58 | 0.2 |
| Southwark | 96.6 | 87.93 | 49.56 | 85.98 | 0.2 |
| City and County of the City of London | 54.58 | 45.72 | 45.26 | 45.29 | 0 |
| Wandsworth | 98.64 | 90.53 | 41.07 | 73.97 | 0 |
| Newham | 98.51 | 85.9 | 38.85 | 79.99 | 0.7 |
| Merton | 99.34 | 94.05 | 33.56 | 88.17 | 0.1 |
| Redbridge | 99.5 | 94.6 | 30.34 | 94.38 | 0.1 |
| Hammersmith and Fulham | 96.62 | 71.13 | 30.03 | 56.51 | 0 |
| Bexley | 98.81 | 82.29 | 29.68 | 79.12 | 0.3 |
| Waltham Forest | 99.27 | 94.97 | 24.24 | 94.26 | 0.1 |
| Croydon | 98.67 | 92.27 | 23.76 | 92.14 | 0.1 |
| Greenwich | 98.83 | 86.64 | 21.43 | 84.72 | 0.2 |
| Brent | 98.24 | 75.87 | 20.12 | 73.82 | 0.3 |
| Richmond upon Thames | 99.52 | 95.05 | 19 | 90.05 | 0.1 |
| Lewisham | 98.11 | 76.14 | 18.07 | 70.87 | 0.2 |
| Camden | 98.11 | 93.01 | 17.31 | 89.6 | 0 |
| Barnet | 98.61 | 63.93 | 16.72 | 61.84 | 0.2 |
| Islington | 98.03 | 90.35 | 16.42 | 90.23 | 0 |
| Hackney | 99.2 | 81.11 | 14.79 | 76.56 | 0 |
| Harrow | 98.93 | 87.15 | 14.22 | 87.15 | 0.1 |
| Lambeth | 98.35 | 84.32 | 13.05 | 57.85 | 0 |
| Kensington and Chelsea | 98.29 | 92.75 | 11.81 | 75.33 | 0 |
| Ealing | 98.57 | 77.15 | 11.04 | 76.61 | 0.4 |
| Hounslow | 99.11 | 92.97 | 9.96 | 90.98 | 0.2 |
| Sutton | 99.28 | 92.53 | 7.92 | 87.56 | 0.1 |
| Bromley | 98.52 | 91.13 | 7.11 | 71.54 | 0.5 |
| Havering | 98.13 | 88.92 | 4.39 | 88.03 | 0.6 |
| Hillingdon | 97.25 | 90.98 | 4.21 | 86.47 | 0.5 |
| Enfield | 99.19 | 93.41 | 3.58 | 92.12 | 0.2 |
| Kingston upon Thames | 99.45 | 94.04 | 3.4 | 92.39 | 0 |
| Haringey | 99.41 | 87.11 | 3.17 | 85.67 | 0 |
So Westminster is second place with regards to FTTP coverage, but second from bottom for superfast services and fifth from bottom for Gigabit coverage.
Comments
At least all the London boroughs (except the City) are doing much better than many rural areas - in the Forest of Dean we still have 7.63% sub-USO, and 15% sub-superfast.
Out of curiosity, what would be involved for you to gather data about leased lines, availability comparisons and a dark fibre map in TBB?
Leased lines means someone has ordered and is using it, so realistically only possible with the powers Ofcom have, since anyone can order a leased line.
Dark fibre there is so much out there and vast majority has no bearing on consumer services so would be difficult - not even Ofcom tries that one.
- andrew
- about 5 hours ago
It is also joint top for having No lines under 10Mb. Just goes stats are what you what them to say.
So Top, second place, fifth from bottom and second from bottom.