27 per cent UK homes can get gigabit broadband, including full fibre services
Eight million UK homes can now access gigabit-speed broadband according to UK comms regulator Ofcom’s annual Connected Nations report, which analyses the availability of broadband and mobile services across the UK and each of its regions.
This year’s report comes as millions of people continue to work from home as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, which has seen a significant shift in when, where and how people get online and make calls.
Nearly eight million UK homes (27 per cent) can get gigabit broadband, which includes full fibre services and Virgin Media’s fastest cable package. Northern Ireland has the highest availability, with more than half of homes (56 per cent) able to get these faster services, while 42 per cent of Scottish homes also have access.
Ofcom notes that Gigabit speeds can be delivered in two main ways currently: using the latest enhancement to the cable network developed originally for transmitting cable TV (DOCSIS 3.1); and full fibre, which uses fibre-optic connections all the way to the home – replacing the decades-old copper wires that were installed for the telephone network originally and are more likely to be affected during peak times and severe weather.
The report shows full-fibre broadband is now available to just over 5 million homes (18 per cent) – a rise of 80 per cent in a year, the largest increase to date. Availability in the UK is highest in Northern Ireland (56 per cent), followed by Wales (19 per cent).
Full-fibre broadband is now available to just over 5 million homes (18 per cent) in the UK.
One of the main advantages of full fibre over older technologies is its greater reliability. This is important, as the UK’s data-hungry households used an average of 429 gigabytes (GB) of data each month in 2020 – up 36 per cent from last year (315GB), and 225 per cent from four years ago (132GB in 2016).
Continued investment in fibre services is vital to ensure the UK’s networks can keep up with this growing demand. Ofcom has set out proposals to promote competition and supercharge investment in full fibre, and it will publish its final decisions in March 2021.
For millions of families this year, life during lockdown would have been even more difficult without reliable broadband to work, learn, play and see loved ones, notes Lindsey Fussell, Ofcom’s Network and Communications Group Director. So it’s encouraging that future-proof, gigabit broadband is now available to a quarter of homes, and we expect that to rise even faster in the coming months.