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More than a quarter of homes in the UK (27 per cent) are now able to access gigabit-capable broadband as the country's full fibre rollout gathers pace, new figures from Ofcom have revealed.
The telecoms regulator's latest Connected Nations report found some eight million properties are now able to enjoy speeds of up to 1Gbps. It noted this has been particularly important in 2020, as many more people have come to depend on their broadband connection to work from home throughout the coronavirus pandemic.
Commenting on the figures, Ofcom's network and communications group director Lindsey Fussell said: "For millions of families this year, life during lockdown would have been even more difficult without reliable broadband to work, learn, play and see loved ones.
"So it's encouraging that future-proof, gigabit broadband is now available to a quarter of homes, and we expect that to rise even faster in the coming months."
Overall, the average broadband download speed in the UK has now reached 72Mbps. The widest availability of gigabit speeds is in Northern Ireland, where more than half of homes (56 per cent) are able to access these faster services.
Most of the UK's gigabit connections are provided by fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) networks. Around five million homes are connected using this technology, with Openreach's rollout supported by a wide variety of emerging alternative network providers.
Overall, FTTP broadband coverage now stands at 18 per cent, compared with figures of ten per cent last year and six per cent in 2018, indicating how quickly the rollout of this technology is progressing.
The majority of the UK's remaining gigabit-capable connections use DOCSIS 3.1 cable technology provided by Virgin Media.
Ofcom observed the widespread use of full fibre technology will become increasingly important in the coming years as the volume of internet traffic in the UK continues to rise. It found that in 2020, households used an average of 429GB of data each month – a 36 per cent jump from last year (315GB), and a 225 per cent increase from 2016 (132GB).
The regulator emphasised the importance of continued investment in fibre services in order to keep up with this growing demand. To this end, it has set out proposals to promote competition and "supercharge" investment in full fibre, with its final decisions to be published in March 2021.
It added one of the main advantages of this technology is its reliability, as it is not as affected by issues such as severe weather and slowdowns in peak periods, compared with the older copper-based connectivity it is replacing.
Ofcom also observed that despite the additional strain put on the UK's connectivity networks this year as a result of increased home working and video streaming, the country's networks have proven to be highly resilient.
"Our data shows the number of network resilience and security problems - including outages - reported to us was broadly in-line with recent years, suggesting the networks have generally coped well during the coronavirus lockdown periods," the report stated.
