Category: Broadband

The start of 2024 has seen a big jump in full-fibre availability with an almost 2 point jump in coverage in the last 31 days.

A bumper day for Project Gigabit contracts, suggesting that the delays caused by the Christmas and New Year holidays are definitely a thing of the past and hopefully we can look to many more contracts in the coming month or two.

Our investigation into social tariffs has shown that broadband providers are often making it very difficult for consumers to find them, unless they specifically go looking for them, leaving many eligible householders on various state benefits paying more for broadband than they need to.

The January 2024 Broadband Report is here. We have analysed the state of broadband in the UK and released our latest report which looks at how different areas of the UK are performing in terms of broadband, gigabit and fibre coverage. We also have a special feature examining Social Tariffs.

An interim set of financial results from BT Group, giving the bare minimum but the good news is the FTTP roll-outs continue and take-up is 34%.

Some parts of Wales such as Merthyr Tydfil have a fairly good split between rural and urban full-fibre coverage but others such as Pembrokeshire has distinct slant towards urban full-fibre availability at 87% versus just 34% in rural areas.

Just 13 days to jump from 61% to 62% coverage, showing that while some providers are pausing roll-outs others are still building at pace.

The longest month of the year is almost over and we are seeing the first signs of the Openreach full-fibre roll-out speeding up.

While we are seeing lots of better and faster broadband being built, that race is creating increased levels of digital inequality and an extensive analysis by Point Topic highlights how much pricing and service availability varies across the UK.

The widely unpopular annual price rise formula of inflation plus a set percentage affecting both in and out of contract customers will be a known quantity once the CPI and RPI figures are published on Wednesday morning.