Superfast broadband reaches over four million UK homes and businesses

17 Feb 2017 12:34 PM

Government’s Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) rollout of superfast broadband has reached 4,309,668 premises.

The UK Government yesterday published the ‘Broadband Performance Indicator – December 2016’. These statistics released by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport show the number of premises where superfast speeds (above 24 Mbit/s download) are made available as a result of BDUK-supported projects.

Welcoming this news, Raj Sivalingam, techUK's Executive Director of Telecoms and Spectrum said, “As shown through the recent Broadband Performance Indicator, the UK is starting from a good place of connectivity. As the UK looks towards a post-Brexit environment, Britain’s key differentiator will be being recognised as having a great, world leading, standard of connectivity. Key components of this ambition will be in incentivising investment and innovation to enable world class digital connectivity in each of urban, rural, transport and in-building environments.”

Some of the key findings released in the report include:

• 4,309,668 premises had a superfast broadband service made available by the end of December 2016 as a result of BDUK-supported projects;
• BDUK grants to local authorities and budget transfers to devolved administrations amounted to a cumulative £513,598,393 in cash terms up to the end of December 2016;
• This equates to 8,391 premises covered per £million of broadband delivery programme expenditure up to the end of December 2016. Including current claims or using a true accruals basis would lead to higher expenditure figures and lower numbers of premises covered per £million of broadband delivery programme expenditure.

Check out our earlier coverage of the BDUK rollout of superfast broadband in November, May and August.