NEWS
NI Takes Lead In Full Fibre Broadband Race Northern Ireland has become a leader in the availability of fibre broadband, according to Ofcom.
T
he fastest connections are now available to nearly three quarters of homes in Northern Ireland, putting the region streets ahead of other UK nations.
The regulator’s annual Connected Nations report reveals more than half a million homes in Northern Ireland (539,000) now have access to full-fibre broadband connections; over 116,000 more than last year. These connections can deliver much higher download speeds and are also more reliable than older, copper-based broadband. Among the four UK nations, Northern Ireland (71%) has the highest availability of full-fibre services, compared to England (27%), Scotland (27%) and Wales (27%). Northern Ireland’s full fibre position is a result of significant private and publicly funded investment over recent years. Commercial build-out of full-fibre networks has continued apace with Openreach, Virgin Media and Fibrus aggressively expanding their coverage footprints. The last year has also seen the start of the Northern Ireland Executive’s Project Stratum broadband programme, which is targeting premises with poor broadband, mostly in rural areas. While Northern Ireland is leading the way on full fibre coverage, there are still
significant numbers of homes (45,000) that still don’t have decent broadband from a fixed line. These figures highlight the impact Project Stratum, which is aimed at premises that can’t get superfast speeds, will have and on rural areas especially. Full-fibre connections – along with upgraded cable networks – can deliver download speeds of up to 1 Gbit/s. They can better support data-hungry households where family members need to stream, work, game, video-call and study online at the same time. And in a year when many people continue to work from home due to the coronavirus pandemic, average monthly data use in Northern Ireland grew to 455 GB per connection - more than treble what it was five years ago (132GB). Broadband services and speeds vary across Northern Ireland between urban and rural areas. This is because properties in rural areas tend to be more dispersed and are more expensive to provide new, faster, fixed line broadband services to. However, there has been significant improvement in the availability of faster broadband services over the last year. A rise in full fibre coverage is especially evident in several, mainly rural council areas where coverage had previously 93
been very low. So, in Newry Mourne and Down full fibre coverage now extends to some 71% of residential premises, up from just 35% a year ago. Full fibre coverage in Causeway Coast and Glens is now 66%, up from 42% a year ago. More urban areas too, such as Belfast, Ards and North Down, and Lisburn and Castlereagh have also seen impressive increases in full fibre coverage over the last year. Ofcom expects full fibre coverage in all council areas to continue this upward trend on the back of Project Stratum and ongoing commercially led investments. Jonathan Rose, Director Ofcom Northern Ireland, said: “It’s very encouraging to see Northern Ireland performing so well on the availability of full-fibre broadband. This technology is crucial in supporting our economy, especially at a time and when more and more of us are working from home. “It’s especially welcome to see more rural areas having access to faster broadband services, a trend that will accelerate over the next few years as the Northern Ireland Executive’s Project Stratum programme gathers pace.”
