Category: Broadband

The Rural Gigabit Connectivity programme believes it has identified the 10% of premises not likely to see commercial roll-out of full fibre by 2033 and is launching its £200m intervention programme to try and avoid these areas having to wait another decade or more.

The trend for more full fibre in new build homes continues with almost 1 in 7 new properties in 2019 looking set for full fibre.

Based on some comments from the Welsh Government’s Deputy Minister for Economy and Transport, Lee Waters AM it seems those in power in Wales feel that the end of the road has been reached for rural FTTP via gap funding.

In utopia everything is free and improvements always happen automatically at the same time for everyone and carry no costs. Some coverage of the Openreach shift to 15 million FTTP is scaremongering that this ideal will be missed and people will be forced to pay more.

With three Government programmes planning and delivering full fibre broadband these are to combined under a single umbrella known as the 'The UK Fibre Programme'

The G.fast roll-out continues and in the last two weeks we have added 15 new exchanges to our checker where some cabinets now have live G.fast pods.

Ofcom recently published its analysis of its broadband monitoring data captured in November 2018 and we compare their results with those from our crowd sourced speed test results.

There has been a few statements from Openreach which while not false have the potential to lead the public to believe the situation is actually very much better than the reality at present.

Another month passes and more full fibre has appeared and the volume of new VDSL2 cabinets is remaining so low that the amount of rural FTTP from the BDUK contracts is matching or exceeding the amount of VDSL2 each week.

Ofcom has published an interim update for its Connected Nations report based on data supplied by providers in January 2019 and is now saying the UK has reached 95% superfast coverage at 30 Mbps and faster.