Big internet service providers are used to slings and arrows shot at them. Sometimes the criticisms of their performance seem undeserved. Consider U.K. gigabit-per-second internet access availability.
U.K. ISPs already had said they would cover between 70 percent and 80 percent of households of the country with gigabit-capable infrastructure by 2025, without government assistance.
In September 2020 about 27 percent of homes could buy it. A mere year later, 46 percent of homes could buy gigabit services, according to Ofcom.
Ofcom estimated availability had reached closer to 60 percent by the end of 2021, largely as a result of Virgin Media’s upgrade to DOCSIS 3.1, Total Telecom says.
That is a dramatic change for a single year’s work.
Yes, some households will be harder to upgrade, and yes, there will be additional government support to do so.
To help deliver on these targets, in 2019, the government pledged £5 billion in public funding to help connect the most difficult-to-reach 20 percent of households, Total Telecom says. Most will be allocated no earlier than 2026, however.
The point is that we would probably all find it hard to point to a single year when progress that dramatic was made. Basically, the major ISPs more than doubled the availability of gigabit per second service in a year’s time.
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