Colossal broadband boost for millions in UK — 4 out of 5 British households can now unlock ultra-fast speeds

It's a surprising turnaround for the UK.

For much of the 2010s, the UK was widely seen as a laggard compared with European neighbours. Over the last decade, No. 10 has launched large public programmes to plug market gaps, while a surge of private investment has been made to rebuild networks and meet demand from homeowners for faster speeds. To finish the job, the UK Government launched Project Gigabit — directing public funding to the hardest-to-reach areas and aiming for near-universal gigabit-capable access by the 2030s — shifting the UK from laggard to genuine contender.

With so many of us becoming entirely reliant on fast broadband connections for everything from calling family to watching live television channels, the need for fast internet connections has only grown over time. Even if download speeds between 1–5 Gbps might seem excessive for your needs now, it's crucial to remember these full-fibre cables are here to stay and power our connected lives throughout the 21st Century.

Fortunately, the number of UK households that can now access the fastest broadband connections isn't the only improvement. More UK households now have several options when it comes to choosing an internet provider.

Openreach now covers 60.19% of UK premises with its full-fibre connections, which are used by brands like EE, Sky, TalkTalk, and BT, to name just a few, but here's the really exciting bit – smaller, hyper-local alternative fibre networks, dubbed alt-nets, now reach 43.4% of properties across the country.

What does this mean for you? One-third of UK homes can now choose between multiple suppliers that offer the fastest, full-fibre connection.

That's 33.13% of premises with at least two standalone networks competing for your business — brilliant news if you're looking to switch, since you'll have more choice between the latest deals, bundled services and improved service as providers fight to win you over.

The pace of rollout has been remarkable, with coverage surging from 75% across the UK in March to 80.06% by September. That's a jump of over five percentage points in just six months, with around 300,000 premises being added each month by Openreach alone.

Even better, if you're after the absolute fastest speeds, gigabit broadband now reaches 88.76% of UK premises. At this rate, thinkbroadband.com expects the country could hit the 90% milestone around Christmas.

That means 9 out of 10 homes will have access to broadband speeds of up to 1,000 megabits per second. This is higher than the rate of full-fibre broadband because of older technologies, like DOCSIS 3.1, that provide fast download speeds over 1Gbps, but offer much slower upload speeds.

This isn't the case with future-proofed full-fibre, which offers 1,000Mbps speeds for downloads and uploads, like backing up your photos to the cloud.

Sebastien Lahtinen, Director at thinkbroadband.com, told GB News: “Full fibre rollouts have slowed a little from their peak, partly due to overbuild as Openreach pushes on to its 25 million premises goal. Some providers, like Nexfibre, are now catching up on areas that were waiting for key work.

Competition from altnets is growing, and more retailers are using wholesale agreements, which should hopefully increase take-up and encourage investors to increase funding for further rollouts.

While full fibre offers significantly higher speeds, its main advantage is a more reliable service, and with the right retailer, streaming TV will be buffer-free. The astonishing speeds of 1 Gbps up to 5 Gbps becoming increasingly available might be excessive for many, but they demonstrate that full fibre is here to stay and will continue to power our connected lives throughout the 21st century.

"With the right provider, families can stream TV, video call, and work from home without interruptions.

For the 20% of homes still without full fibre, overbuilding may feel unnecessary, but it is vitally important in ensuring competition both in terms of keeping costs down for consumers, but also ensuring network operators don't cut corners in delivering reliable future-proof services”

It's true. If you're unlucky enough to be living in one of the remaining 20% of homes without access to these next-generation speeds, the fact that a third of UK households can choose between two or more full-fibre providers might seem like a kick in the teeth. However, this increased competition is vital as it keeps costs down and ensures providers don't cut corners.

The good news is that with providers adding hundreds of thousands of premises monthly, your turn could come sooner than you think.

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