Gigabit broadband Britain

Over 70% of premises in the United Kingdom can now receive a fibre network connection. Many can receive a service from more than one provider. In theory, many homes could have gigabit per second internet access, but many still do not. This is implications for the delivery of television and video services online.

In its latest quarterly update, Point Topic, which tracks the availability of fixed broadband in the United Kingdom, reported that fibre to the premises coverage had reached 23.2 million premises or 70.5% of the total. That was up from 67.7% the previous quarter.

Those numbers include Openreach, Virgin Media O2, KCOM and a number of alternative network providers or altnets.

Nearly 8.3 million premises, or nearly a quarter of those in the country, had access to two or more fibre networks, and 1.1m were covered by three or more. A few thousand premises have a choice of four or more fibre network providers.

In some areas, multiple providers are competing for the same customers, while other parts of the country are underserved.

Fibre coverage was over 50% in 84.5% of local authorities, up from up from 77.5% of them three months earlier.

Openreach, the subsidiary of BT, now has a fibre footprint of over 15 million premises, offering full fibre coverage to 46% of all premises in the United Kingdom, up from 43.4% the previous quarter. That still leaves over 17 million premises where it does not offer a full fibre connection.

Thanks largely to KCOM, which for historical reasons covers the Hull area that is not served by BT, Kingston upon Hull has the greatest fibre coverage in the country, at over 99% of premises.

Eight of the top ten local authority areas with the best fibre coverage are in Northern Ireland, as a result of efforts by Openreach, Fibrus and nexfibre. Belfast remains the leading local authority in terms of the availability of Openreach ﬁbre, with 95.9% of its premises passed.

For geographical reasons, only 97 premises in the Isles of Scilly have access to fibre, which at less than 7% is one of the lowest percentages by local authority.

An increasing number of altnets now have over 100,000 premises passed, with five passing over a million. CityFibre has 3.4 million, Community fibre passes 1.4 million, followed by nexfibre with 1.2 million, Netomnia with 1.1 million, and Hyperoptic with just over 1 million. Netomia has announced a merger with brsk that will provide a combined footprint of 1.8 million, with a target of reaching 3 million by the end of 2025.

Some 16% of premises in the United Kingdom do not have access to a gigabit capable connection, either fibre or coax, down from 17.7% the previous quarter. In Stroud, in Gloucestershire, with a population of over 120,000, more than half of premises do not have access to such a network. In Wales, just over a quarter of homes do not have access to a gigabit per second capable connection, while in Scotland it is 22.5%.

While it might see that Britain is close to its target of 85% gigabit coverage by 2025, the distribution remains very uneven.

Coverage is one thing, but adoption is another. Just because there might be fibre in the street does not mean that will sign up for a gigabit fibre connection.

Now that the majority of homes in the country can in theory receive a full fibre connection, the argument that it is not really necessary falls away. Companies are falling over themselves to sell fibre connections.

The challenge is that connecting up the rest of the country remains a more expensive proposition than overserved urban and suburban areas.

That has policy implications for the delivery of television and video services over the internet. While the country has far more fibre connectivity than it did five years ago, there is still some way to go until it is ubiquitous.