- Nearly 700,000 homes have access to the fastest broadband, over 155,000 more than a year ago
- Average broadband download speeds in Northern Ireland have increased by 40% to 115 Mbit/s
- Northern Ireland has the highest availability of full-fibre broadband in the UK
More than four in five homes in Northern Ireland can now access the fastest, most reliable internet connections, as the rollout of full fibre technology continues.
Ofcom’s annual Connected Nations report, which measures the availability of broadband and mobile services across the UK, found that full fibre connections are now available to at least 695,000 homes – an increase of over 155,000 from last year.
Among the four UK nations, Northern Ireland has the highest availability of full fibre services (85%), compared to England (41%), Scotland (41%) and Wales (40%).
With households now using 481 GB of data a month on average, full fibre can better support families who need to stream, work, game, video-call and study online all at the same time.
Average broadband download speeds in Northern Ireland have increased by 40% to 115 Mbit/s, up from 82 Mbit/s in 2021, and reflects increasing availability and take-up of faster broadband services.
We estimate that the take-up of services using full fibre at any speed, where fibre is available, is around 25% in Northern Ireland – up from 19% last year.
Availability of broadband services increasing
The significant increase in the availability of high-speed internet services over the last year is a result of continued significant commercial and publicly funded investment in fibre networks.
The Northern Ireland Executive’s broadband scheme - Project Stratum - which is aimed at rural areas is progressing at pace, while Openreach, Virgin Media and Fibrus continue with commercial deployments to urban and semi-rural areas.
As of October 2022, Project Stratum, which aims to provide a full fibre service to 85,000 premises that can’t get a superfast service, had reached the halfway mark, with more than 46,000 premises passed.
In addition, the Department for the Economy recently launched a request for information regarding the implementation of Project Gigabit in Northern Ireland; Project Gigabit will help push Northern Ireland towards 100% full fibre availability.
A rise in full fibre coverage is especially notable in several, mainly rural council areas where coverage had previously been very low. In Fermanagh and Omagh, full fibre coverage now extends to some 71% of residential premises, up from just 36% a year ago.
Full fibre coverage in Mid Ulster is now 75%, up from 53% a year ago. Indeed, every council area, with the exception of Belfast which already had high levels of coverage, has seen double digit increases in full fibre availability over the last year.
Many more people are benefitting from faster, more reliable internet as the rapid rollout of full-fibre broadband continues. Indeed, Northern Ireland has shown the way with the highest availability in the UK of these faster services.
And with further publicly funded investment planned to deliver fast broadband to hard-to-reach areas, Northern Ireland is well on the way towards 100% full fibre availability.
Jonathan Rose, Ofcom’s Northern Ireland Director
5G coverage
For the first time Ofcom is also reporting on the rollout of 5G coverage in Northern Ireland, which is still in the early stages of deployment. 5G coverage outside of premises in Northern Ireland from individual mobile network operators ranges from 14-26%
Around one in five mobile handsets are now 5G-capable, a figure that has doubled over the past 12 months, while 5G traffic in the UK has trebled over the same period and now makes up almost 10% of all mobile traffic.
Notes to editors
- An interactive version of the report, also published today, allows people to look up how coverage compares in their area.
- Ofcom has also published the International Broadband Scorecard, which compares broadband availability and take-up across 17 different nations.