Your bad broadband speeds won't be fixed for YEARS, confirms UK Government
A REVISED deadline for nationwide plans to upgrade sluggish broadband speeds reveals just how long some people will be waiting for fast downloads.
The UK Government has set itself a new target to reach 1Gbps broadband speeds nationwide – 2030. That's five years later than the initial target and leaves those suffering with abysmal download speeds while working from home, streaming television, and keeping in touch with loved ones via video calls with dire connections for close to a decade.
During the 2019 General Election, the Conservatives promised to bring these next-generation broadband speeds to every household by 2025. A little over a year later, this was watered down to 85 percent coverage by 2025. And now, as part of its Levelling Up White Paper, the Government has finally revealed when it believes it will achieve UK-wide coverage.
Gigabit-capable connections provide download speeds up to 1,000Mbps. Given that Netflix only recommends 5Mbps for High Definition streaming and 25Mbps for 4K Ultra HD quality (the best picture quality available), it's clear just how much excess bandwidth is available with these connections. Of course, the 1,000Mbps allowance is shared between every device and household member under your roof, so those with dozens of smart home gadgets – from connected lightbulbs, smart thermostats, smart speakers like Amazon Echo and Google Home, laptops, games consoles, and smartphones – will likely need the headroom afforded by these future-proofed connections.
As the next wave of innovations, including Virtual Reality (VR) gaming, next-generation games for consoles like the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X (Call Of Duty: Black Ops Cold War requires users to download some 187.9 GB for all features – something that would take six hours on the current average home broadband download speed), 8K picture quality movies and boxsets, and more, starts to roll-out to more homes across the UK, gigabit speeds will transition from a luxury to a necessity.
According to Ofcom, there are around 600,000 homes and businesses in the UK without access to broadband speeds above 10Mbps. For those suffering with these glacial download speeds, the 2030 deadline will come as a harsh blow.
The budget set by the Government to achieve nationwide 1Gbps coverage – £5 billion – remains. In his November 2020 Spending Review, Chancellor Rishi Sunak confirmed that just £1.2bn of this budget would be made available before 2024.
Virgin Media O2 currently boasts the biggest gigabit-capable broadband network in the country, with more than 15.5 million households able to access these next-generation speeds. With average download speeds topping 1,130Mbps, Virgin Media's Gig1 connections are roughly 16x faster than the average home broadband in the UK, which was recorded at around 70Mbps last year.
BT-owned Openreach, which manages the infrastructure for BT, EE, Sky, TalkTalk, and dozens of other internet suppliers, has connected around 6.5 million homes to gigabit-capable broadband, with ambitions to reach 25 million premises by December 2026.
As well as these industry heavyweights, the push to bring gigabit-capable broadband to millions of homes across the UK has spurred a number of new competitors to enter the market. Lesser-known brands such as Hyperoptic, Giganet, Zzoomm, Community Fibre and others have launched to bring full-fibre connectivity to inner-cities and rural communities that could find themselves waiting years before Virgin Media and Openreach start digging up the road to install the next-generation cables.
Speaking about the revised deadline for nationwide gigabit-capable broadband, analyst Matthew Howett, from research company Assembly, told the BBC that the UK Government had overseen "a slight shifting of the goalposts of what was promised" in the election manifesto.
What Is Full-Fibre Broadband, And Why Is It Better Than Your Current Connection?
Full-fibre broadband is the future of the internet, and telecoms firms like Virgin Media and BT's Openreach have been hard at work upgrading their networks to deliver these super-fast download speeds. While existing broadband connections rely on copper cables to deliver internet from those green communication boxes littered throughout UK streets, full-fibre broadband – as the name suggests – uses more powerful (and reliable) fibre-optic cables to your front door instead.
The fastest fibre broadband speeds currently available in the UK is offered with Virgin Media's Gig1 package, which boasts average download speeds of 1,130Mbps. That's light years ahead of the average broadband download speed in Blighty, which stands at around 70Mbps as measured earlier in 2021.
As an example of the benefits of fibre connections, Gigabit broadband will let you download a feature-length movie in High Definition in just 36 seconds, or a crisp Ultra HD 4K film in under three minutes. These speeds mean busy households will be able to back up their photos, download software updates, make video calls, binge boxsets in 4K, and play video games online all at the same time at peak times without a hint of buffering. It also future-proofs homes for the next wave of technology, including 8K video quality, virtual reality, and more.
By the end of 2021, Virgin Media upgraded its entire network of 15.5million homes to gigabit-capable broadband (although it will take longer until all of those customers are using full-fibre connections). So if you're covered by Virgin Media you can sign up right away. While BT's Openreach will finish its full-fibre network upgrade (some 25 million homes) by December 2026. So far, the super-fast downloads are available to more than 6 million properties covered by Openreach, which supplies infrastructure for BT, TalkTalk, Sky, Plusnet, EE, Vodafone, and many more.
Smaller companies, like Hyperoptic, Gigaclear and Community Fibre, have sprung up to bring full-fibre broadband to areas not currently served by either Virgin Media or Openreach. These include projects specifically targeted at rural villages or commuter towns. If you can't wait for next-generation broadband, these are a great option – and can be cheaper than better-known brands too.
"How close they get to 'nationwide' will depend on two things - firstly, how far and fast the commercial build happens, and secondly, how well the government's scheme for the 20% of the country that is harder to reach and will need public money goes," he said.
Speaking to Express.co.uk, David Hennel of National Broadband, a firm that specialises in leveraging 4G and 5G mobile internet to deliver broadband across the UK, commented: "The Government has always had strong rhetoric when it comes to its levelling up agenda. However, when it comes to the digital connectivity of properties in rural areas, it has simply not lived up to its promises. Revised plans announced in November 2021, to provide 85 percent of UK properties with gigabit-capable broadband were already a regression of its original 2019 pledge to provide this to every single property in the country with an investment of £5 billion. To be frank, this original plan was an unachievable ‘Pie In The Sky’ promise – but worse, the reduced objective actually risks leaving out those most in need of help."