Category: Broadband

The first budget of the current Government has just finished and the manifesto promise of £5 billion for Gigabit broadband has been confirmed.

The tabloids are saying that broadband in the UK will not cope with millions of home workers if the COVID-19 virus outbreak leads to offices closing.

There was a time when the contents of the budget were kept a secret but the modern trend of teaser announcements continues with the Chancellor confirming that £5 billion will be announced for Gigabit broadband intervention.

The monthly round-up of where things stand on broadband coverage across the UK and its countries and regions is now available with the full fibre coverage well on its way towards the 13% of premises mark.

We have crunched the numbers and worst case scenario seems to be Gigabit available to 57.9% of premises ranging to 79.7% based on build volumes already announced.

The battle for bragging rights to be top of the table has three full fibre providers delivering very similar median download speeds.

SOGEA has been around for what feels like ages but the shift from early market deployment trial to full launch marks the start of a big change in the UK landline and broadband market.

The presence of the Virgin Media Gig1 in Southampton, Reading and Manchester has been combined with our mapping of the full fibre coverage and we can report the UK has 14.57% coverage of Gigabit broadband.

The patterns for new homes have not changed massively since our last update in November 2019 but there has been a small increase in the amount of full fibre used and importantly more have superfast speeds available.

Ultrafast broadband coverage has broken the 60% barrier when you combine the availability of FTTP, cable broadband and G.fast.