66% of the UK now covered by Gigabit Broadband
Ofcom’s Spring 2022 report revealed that 66% of UK homes (19.3 million buildings) are now able to connect to a gigabit-enabled network.
In addition, the report revealed that 33% of UK households (9.6 million) are now within range of an all-glass FTTP connection. There is significant progress in Ofcom’s Connected Nations 2021 report. In that report, published in September 2021, gigabit-enabled coverage extended to 47% of homes, while 28% were within range of an FTTP connection. The increase in gigabit-capable connectivity has been largely attributed to Virgin Media completing the upgrade of its network with DOCSIS 3.1 technology.
“The rise in FTTP availability (which stood at 21% of buildings in a May 2021 update), has now been largely driven by the deployment of large fibre infrastructure providers, complemented by the growing number of smaller regional providers in the UK,” Ofcom said.
Despite increases in FTTP and gigabit coverage, the report also found that superfast broadband coverage of 30Mbps and above remained largely unchanged. England, Northern Ireland and Wales all saw a one percentage point increase in superfast coverage, which remained at 96% overall. According to Ofcom, this may be due to both the growing difficulty of connecting the remaining 4% of properties and an increasing focus on FTTP and gigabit rollouts.
Overall, the report found that the vast majority of UK homes are within range of a decent broadband connection, defined as having download speeds of at least 10Mbps and upload speeds of at least 1Mbps. However, around 2% of UK homes (506,000) still do not have access to a decent fixed broadband service (up from 650,000 in December 2021). 7% of households were found to have access to a decent broadband connection using Fixed Wireless Access (FWA), while FWA coverage from mobile networks can provide a decent connection to around 94% of UK households.
Although there is still a digital divide, Ofcom says the total number of premises unable to get a decent connection, including FWA and landline, has fallen to 99,500 from 123,000 in December 2021.
