Gigabit broadband reaches 90% of UK homes but 380,000 rural premises still crawl below 10Mbps

Nine in ten homes and businesses in the UK can now order a gigabit-capable broadband connection, Ofcom said on Thursday, but 380,000 premises, nearly all of them rural, still cannot get the 10 megabits a second the regulator defines as the minimum for a decent service.

The regulator’s Connected Nations report puts gigabit coverage at 90.3%, up from 84% a year ago, with full fibre available to 78% of premises. Northern Ireland leads at 96%, followed by England at 91%, Scotland at 86% and Wales at 82%. In Powys and Ceredigion the figure is below 60%, and in parts of the Scottish Highlands below 50%.

The report says the government’s Project Gigabit programme, which subsidises connections in areas commercial operators will not serve, has connected 1.3 million premises against a target of 1.6 million by this point. Two contracts covering mid Wales, worth £110m, were terminated in the summer after the supplier said its costs had risen 40% and it could not complete the work. The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology said the lots would be re-tendered in the new year.

“The hard part is now the only part left,” said Ofcom’s director of connectivity, Fergus Lyle. “The remaining 10% is overwhelmingly places where a connection costs £5,000 or £10,000 a property, and the question for government is whether it is going to pay that or settle for satellite.”

The report notes that low-earth-orbit satellite services, available across the UK for about £75 a month, now have roughly 230,000 subscribers and are likely to be the practical solution for the most remote 1% of premises. But it warns that satellite performance degrades in heavy use and that the services are not yet eligible for the social tariff offered to households on benefits.

For those still waiting, the numbers are not abstract. Nerys Jarman runs a 14-room guesthouse near Llanidloes that gets 6Mbps on a good day. “Guests ask for the wifi code and then ask if it is broken,” she said. “I have been told the fibre is coming in 2022, 2024 and 2026. I have now been told to wait for the re-tender. I am 58. I would like it before I retire.”

The report also records that 8.4 million households now have a full-fibre connection in use, and that average download speed across all connections has risen to 183Mbps. Copper telephone lines are being withdrawn, with 4.6 million lines switched to digital voice services in the past year, a process that has prompted concern about elderly users and telecare alarms during power cuts.

Mobile coverage from at least one operator now reaches 95% of the UK landmass, but the proportion covered by all four networks is 83%, and Ofcom said the merger of two of the networks last year had so far produced no measurable improvement in rural coverage.