Full-fibre connections are available to 12.4 million households (42 percent) in UK – an increase of 4.3 million from last year, Ofcom’s annual Connected Nations report said.
Full-fibre connections – along with upgraded cable networks – can deliver download speeds of 1 gigabit per second or higher. Gigabit-capable broadband is available to 70 percent of the UK (nearly 21 million homes), up from 47 percent last year.
UK households are using 482 GB of data a month on average. Still around 25 percent of households are taking it up where it is available to them. Customers who are out of contract could potentially upgrade to a discounted full fibre package without paying more than they currently do.
97 percent of UK homes can get superfast broadband, which provides download speeds of at least 30 Mbit/s; although more than a quarter (27 percent) who have access to it have not taken it up.
However, nearly 80,000 homes and businesses (0.3 percent) do not have access to decent broadband, defined by the Government as offering download speeds of 10 Mbit/s and upload speeds of 1 Mbit/s. Many of these are in the hardest-to-reach parts of the UK.
This figure has fallen from 123,000 last year, and a further 15,000 of these premises will be covered by publicly-funded rollout schemes in the next 12 months.
Satellite broadband can be an alternative for people who do not have access to traditional broadband services.
Thousands of customers in the UK are taking low earth orbit satellite broadband services. The Government recently announced a trial to deliver high-speed internet to more than a dozen very hard-to-reach locations across the country using satellite.
Around seven in ten UK properties are in areas where 5G is available from at least one mobile network operator, up from about half last year.
Around one in five mobile handsets are 5G-capable. 5G traffic in UK has trebled over the same period and now makes up almost 10 percent of all mobile traffic.
