UK broadband speed words: what they officially mean, and who decides

What each official word means, and who set it

Direct answer: The government sets ultrafast at over 100 Mbit/s. Ofcom's own consumer checker sets it above 300. Both were live on 13 October 2026.

Start with the one everybody agrees on. Superfast is 30 Mbit/s to both bodies. Ofcom's threshold is at least 30; the government's is over 30. The only daylight between them is that one word, which matters to a line running at exactly 30 and to nobody else.

Then the one nobody agrees on. The government puts ultrafast at over 100 Mbit/s. Ofcom's consumer checker puts it above 300. That is a threefold gap on the same word, and it is not a historical hangover we dug up: both pages were live on the day we read them. The table below gives all of it in their own words, so you can check us.

The strangest part is what Ofcom has done with the word since: the word ultrafast does not appear anywhere in Ofcom's Connected Nations 2025 methodology annex. It defined ultrafast in Connected Nations 2023 and the term is simply absent from the 2025 methodology. The regulator's research vocabulary now runs decent, superfast, gigabit-capable, full fibre, and nothing in between.

Which leaves a hole where most of the market lives. Ofcom's checker names two bands and only two: standard up to 30 Mbit/s, and ultrafast above 300. So on Ofcom's own consumer checker, every speed between 30 and 300 Mbit/s has no name at all. A 150 Mbit/s full fibre package, which is roughly what a typical British household is sold today, sits in that gap with no official name on the regulator's own tool.

One row there is doing something different from the others, and it is worth pausing on. Ofcom's definition of full fibre is “An access network structure in which an optical fibre runs all the way from customers' premises to the local exchange or access node.” Read it again: there is no speed anywhere in it. In short, full fibre describes how the line is built, every other tier word describes how fast it goes. That is why full fibre and gigabit get used as though they were the same word when they are not.

The practical version of that: gigabit-capable is not a promise of fibre. Ofcom’s own note on its definition reads “In the UK, this is typically delivered over FTTP or hybrid fibre coaxial (HFC) cable networks.” If your street is described as gigabit-capable, it may be cable. Our guide to the four connection technologies sets out what actually differs between them.

What is your speed called, and do you have any rights?

Direct answer: Two questions. The answer names every official word for your speed, and tells you whether your provider has signed the code that creates the minimum guaranteed speed.

The second answer is the one worth acting on. The minimum guaranteed speed is not a right that comes with buying broadband in Britain; it is a commitment made by the providers that have signed Ofcom’s code. The section below sets out who has and who has not.

Four numbers describe your one connection

Direct answer: four different numbers describe the same connection, and each one is set by a different rule. The advertised speed, the minimum your provider guarantees, what the line is recorded as able to carry, and what your device actually sees.

Every one of those four is published by somebody. No two are measured the same way, none of them is the number on your speed test, and we could not find anywhere that sets them side by side. That is why a reader can do everything right and still end up with four figures that do not reconcile.

The first is a marketing figure governed by advertising rules. The second is a contractual commitment governed by a voluntary code. The third is an availability statistic collected from operators for research. The fourth is whatever your house and your router do to the third one, and no body publishes a figure for it at all.

There is also a question at the end of that chain that nobody has answered in public: no primary source states whether the minimum guaranteed speed is measured at the router or at the device. Ofcom's 2022 residential code defines the term only through the right to exit. A household failing the guarantee over Wi-Fi and passing it at the router has no way to know which number will be tested, which is worth knowing before you make a complaint.

What an advertised speed is allowed to mean

Direct answer: A median measured between 8 and 10pm, which at least half the customer base reaches. The other half do not, and that is the rule working as designed.

The Advertising Standards Authority sets the basis for any speed claim, and it is stricter than it looks. The number has to be one that at least half the relevant customer base actually reaches at peak time, and peak time means between 8 and 10pm. Where a claim meets that test, it has to be described as an average. Which is why broadband adverts say average where they once said up to.

Read that carefully, because the design of it surprises people. The advertised number is deliberately a figure that half the customer base fails to reach at the busiest time of day. It is not a maximum, it is not a minimum and it is not a promise to you. It is a description of the middle of a distribution you have not seen.

Two things nearly every guide gets wrong about this. The rule took effect on 23 May 2018, not in 2017, which is the date of the consultation that produced it. And “up to” was never banned: no primary source says 'up to' speed claims are prohibited. The guidance says plainly that it is not a mandatory approach, so an advertiser may use a different basis and take the risk of a ruling. The reason you no longer see “up to” is commercial caution, not illegality.

What your provider actually guarantees

Direct answer: A minimum guaranteed speed, and an exit if they cannot fix it in 30 days. But the speed code is voluntary, and the altnets have not signed it, so whether you have either depends entirely on who you buy from.

Start with what the code gives you, because it is genuinely strong. Your provider should always give you a minimum guaranteed download speed, and an estimate of what you will actually see at the busiest time of day. Busy means 8 to 10pm on a home line, and noon to 2pm on a business one. If your speed drops below the guarantee and they cannot fix it within 30 days, they have to let you leave. The television and the phone line go with you.

Now the part that is almost never said out loud. That code is voluntary. Ofcom publishes the list of providers that have signed it, and nine of them are residential: BT, EE, NOW Broadband, PlusNet, Sky, TalkTalk, Utility Warehouse, Virgin Media and Zen Internet. The list was last updated on 8 October 2026, so it is current.

Vodafone is not on it. Neither are Hyperoptic, Community Fibre, toob, YouFibre, Gigaclear, Trooli, brsk or the rest of the alternative network sector, which is the fastest growing part of the market. Every consumer guide on this subject, including the previous version of this one, describes the minimum guaranteed speed and the 30-day exit as though they were rights that come with buying broadband in Britain. They are contract terms that nine companies have agreed to.

That is not a reason to avoid an altnet, and several of them are excellent. It is a reason to read what your own contract says about speed before you rely on a remedy you may not have. Our guides to minimum guaranteed speeds and to leaving early over slow speeds cover how the remedy works when you do have it.

Nobody measures what you actually get

Direct answer: Ofcom measured the speeds households received until 14 September 2023. Then it stopped, and no current Ofcom publication gives an average measured UK broadband speed.

For years Ofcom ran a panel of real connections in real homes and published what they delivered. In June 2023 it gave notice that it was stopping, and that the report covering March 2023 measurements would be the last one. That report appeared on 14 September 2023.

Its reason was a reasonable one. Ofcom judged that connection speed had stopped being the thing holding most people back, and on the whole it was right. What carried on in its place is Connected Nations, which reports what can be bought at an address rather than what that address actually receives.

So when you see an average UK broadband speed quoted and attributed to Ofcom, it is coming from a series that ended three years ago or from a source that is not the regulator. The previous version of this page did exactly that, and led with a figure that is not in the report it was credited to. We have taken it out rather than replace it with another one.

One honest qualification, because the page would be weaker without it: the cessation document is a proposal rather than a confirmed decision. Responses were due in July 2023 and we could not find a confirming statement. The cessation is established by what followed rather than by a decision document: no edition exists after 14 September 2023, and the series is gone from Ofcom's own coverage and speeds pages.

If you want to know what your own line is doing, measure it. Our free broadband speed test gives you a number for your connection, which is the only one that describes your house.

Where the speed goes between the line and the screen

Direct answer: Ofcom puts it better than we could: “your wifi connection will never outperform your broadband service.” Everything after the router subtracts.

That one sentence resolves most arguments about broadband speed. Whatever arrives at the router is the ceiling; Wi-Fi can only take away from it. So a speed test run on a phone in an upstairs bedroom is measuring the house as much as the line, and a complaint built on that number is on weak ground.

Ofcom's own list of what moves the figure: “Your Wi-Fi speed can be affected by your router, your device, distance from the router, walls and interference.” And the one people forget, which matters most in a full house: “Your bandwidth is shared between devices.” Its blunter warning for anyone about to ring their provider is “A slow Wi-Fi test does not always mean there is a fault with your broadband line.”

The practical conclusion is dull and it works. If you want to know what you are paying for, test with a cable. If the cabled number is fine and the wireless number is not, the problem is in the house and no provider can fix it for you. Our guide to router placement covers what to do about that.

How to use any of this when you are choosing

Direct answer: Ignore the adjective and read the number. Check whether your provider has signed the code. Then compare on what reaches your address.

Ignore the adjective and read the number. Ultrafast means two different things, superfast means the same thing twice with different wording, and the range most households actually buy has no official name at all. The Mbit/s figure is the only part of a package name that means the same to everybody.

Check whether your provider has signed the code. BT, EE, NOW Broadband, PlusNet, Sky, TalkTalk, Utility Warehouse, Virgin Media and Zen Internet have. If yours has not, you may have no minimum guaranteed speed and no 30-day exit, whatever a comparison page tells you about your rights. It is one line in a contract and it is worth finding before you order.

Then compare on what reaches your address. Every word on this page describes what a premises can get, and that is a street-level fact rather than a national one. Ofcom put full fibre availability at 82% of UK homes in January 2026, which tells you nothing at all about yours.

What this page used to say

Direct answer: Five things, including the headline figure and nine sections that belong to other guides on this site.

Corrections are published rather than quietly edited, with the date each source was read. If you think something here is still wrong, tell us and a person will check it against the source.

In short

1. The UK government puts ultrafast at over 100 Mbit/s. Ofcom’s own consumer checker puts it above 300. Three times the threshold, for the same word.
2. Ofcom and the government agree on superfast at 30 Mbit/s, with one difference of wording: Ofcom says “at least” and the government says “over”.
3. the word ultrafast does not appear anywhere in Ofcom's Connected Nations 2025 methodology annex, so its research vocabulary now has nothing at all between superfast and gigabit.
4. Gigabit-capable is not a synonym for full fibre. Ofcom: “In the UK, this is typically delivered over FTTP or hybrid fibre coaxial (HFC) cable networks.”
5. An advertised speed is a median measured between 8 and 10pm that at least half the customer base reaches, and it has had to be called an average since 23 May 2018.
6. The minimum guaranteed speed and the 30-day right to exit come from a voluntary code signed by nine residential providers: the speed code is voluntary, and the altnets have not signed it.
7. Ofcom stopped publishing measured household broadband speeds after 14 September 2023, so no current Ofcom publication gives an average measured UK broadband speed.

Each line stands on its own and carries its date. Reviewed by a person at least quarterly, last on 13 October 2026.