Ofcom

On December 14, 2022, Openreach notified Ofcom of a new pricing offer for its full-fiber services (Equinox 2). This offer gives lower prices to retail providers—such as BT, Sky, TalkTalk, and Vodafone—if they agree to use mainly Openreach’s full-fiber products for new orders instead of its legacy copper products. Having carefully assessed the range of evidence available—including responses to public consultation—Ofcom has decided not to prevent Equinox 2 from being introduced.

By September 2022, the average download speed for home broadband connections in the UK was 65.3 Mbit/s, an increase of 10% compared to March 2022. This was largely due to people upgrading to faster services. Less than 3% of households had average download speeds of less than 10 Mbit/s, with cable connections offering the highest average download speed. The proportion of homes in the research with broadband connections that use a superfast package (with an advertised download speed of 30 Mbit/s or higher) was 93%.

As construction of the UK’s new broadband backbone continues, full-fibre internet will reach half of UK homes in March 2023. Full-fibre broadband is better broadband. It’s more reliable, and many times faster than the average ‘superfast’ connections people have largely used in recent years. Just five years ago, only 6% of homes could get full fibre. But thanks to competition and investment from network builders, that had reached 42% by September 2022. Based on current data, Ofcom now expects the 50% threshold to be passed in March, and to reach more than 80% within the next two years.