Broadband in Glasgow: what reaches your close, and what you should pay

Check your address first

Direct answer: 6 to 10 gigabit networks are expected in Glasgow by 2029, on Ofcom’s count, and none of them reaches every close or every landing, so the only true answer is the one your own address returns.

The rest of this page explains whatever that check tells you, which is the reason it sits at the top. Until you know which networks reach the building, and in a block of flats which of them have reached your landing, you cannot tell which sections below apply to you.

Full fibre, area by area

Direct answer: In January 2026, full fibre reached 92% of homes across Glasgow City, from 98% in Glasgow Pollok down to 76% in Glasgow Kelvin, according to Ofcom. Six of the eight areas were above 90%.

Twice a year Ofcom publishes a coverage figure for every council in the UK and, for a city this size, for each parliamentary seat inside it. Glasgow comes in eight pieces. The figures are from the Spring 2026 update of 13 May 2026, they describe January 2026, and they count homes, not businesses, so they sit on the same base as Scotland’s 75% and the UK’s 82%. Ofcom’s two terms are worth knowing. “Full fibre” it defines as “An access network structure in which an optical fibre runs all the way from customers’ premises to the local exchange or access node.” “Gigabit-capable” it defines as “A network connection to a customer’s premises capable of delivering download speeds of 1 Gbit/s or more.” Virgin Media’s cable counts as the second and not the first, which is the only reason the two columns in the table below ever differ.

The map tells a simple story. Most of Glasgow is done: six areas sit between 96% and 98%, which is as high as any city in Britain gets. The exceptions are the two areas with the oldest buildings and the most of them. Glasgow Kelvin, which takes in the city centre and the West End, was at 76%, and Glasgow Shettleston at 84%. Those are the areas where a cable has to be brought into a four-storey close, a listed terrace or a converted villa, and where a landlord or a factor has to be found and asked first. Across Scotland the council area as a whole sits fourth of the 32, and across the UK’s 361 councils it sits 63rd.

Ofcom splits the Glasgow City council area into its eight Scottish Parliament constituencies, and so does this table. The “which part” column is our rough translation; the boundaries are the constituency ones. Full fibre and gigabit are shares of homes (residential premises) able to get each, Ofcom, January 2026, published 13 May 2026. Tap a heading to sort.Swipe sideways for the homes column.

Read your own area off that table with two cautions. Each figure is an average over forty to fifty thousand homes, and the closes inside an area vary far more than the areas do: on one Partick street the left-hand close can be wired and the right-hand close waiting on a signature. And “can get” is not “has got”. The next section is about how many Glasgow homes have taken what already passes the door, and that number is the one worth fixing.

Lights off: Glasgow’s take-up gap

Direct answer: In January 2026, 43% of the Glasgow premises that could get full fibre had a full fibre line, Ofcom says, which ranks the city 20th of Scotland’s 32 councils. On its own network Openreach counted lower still in October 2024: “just 27 per cent of Glaswegians who could upgrade to ultrafast broadband have done so”.

Two sources, one message. Ofcom’s figure covers every network and says 43% of covered premises had switched, against 47% across Scotland on our weighting of the council rows and “47% of all premises with access to full fibre” for the UK, in Ofcom’s words. Openreach’s figure covers only its own wires and is older, from the day it brought a roadshow to the city in October 2024, when it said “just 27 per cent of Glaswegians who could upgrade to ultrafast broadband have done so”. Its advice then is still the point: “People need to contact, and place orders through, their broadband service provider to take advantage”. By July 2025 it was putting it as “tens of thousands of people are yet to upgrade their broadband service”.

Midlothian, next door, is the highest council in Scotland at 70%; West Dunbartonshire, also next door, is the lowest at 23%. Glasgow sits between them at 43%, a little below Edinburgh’s 40%. Why? Ofcom publishes the figures and not the reasons, so this page does not guess. Two things on the page are at least consistent with it: more households in Glasgow live in flats than anywhere else in Scotland, where the line to the building and the line to the flat are two separate jobs, and Openreach itself says thousands of the city’s flats are stuck at the first of them. Both are covered further down.

And there is a deadline. Once three quarters of an exchange area can get full fibre, Openreach stops selling copper broadband there, and the analogue phone network closes for good on 31 January 2027. Seven Glasgow exchanges were named in one year of stop sell rounds, which earns them a section of their own below.

The networks that build in Glasgow

Direct answer: Openreach and CityFibre under most of the city, Virgin Media on its own cable, and Hyperoptic in some blocks, with YouFibre building in the towns to the east. Ofcom expects 6 to 10 gigabit-capable operators to be running in the council area by January 2029.

Two companies sit behind every broadband bill: the brand that sends it and the network the brand rents. In Glasgow the big brands rent on more than one network, which is how Vodafone or Sky can quote two prices for two closes on the same street. Below is what each network says about the city on its own website, on the date shown, with the old dates left showing, because the age of a figure is part of the figure.

Openreach, the network behind most of the big brands

BT, Sky, TalkTalk, Vodafone, EE, Plusnet and most of the smaller brands rent Openreach’s wires, and Openreach is the only network that states a Glasgow number and refreshes it. Its release of 10 July 2025 says “More than 200,000 homes and businesses throughout Glasgow are now able to access to some of the fastest, most reliable broadband anywhere in Europe”, puts the spend at “an estimated £60m”, and claims to be “reaching over 60 per cent of properties”. Nine months earlier, in October 2024, it said “More than 195,000 Glasgow properties already have access to Openreach’s ultrafast Full Fibre network, including over 80,000 flats and apartments”, and that “just 27 per cent of Glaswegians who could upgrade to ultrafast broadband have done so”. Three fifths of the city on its own count; Ofcom’s 92% is every network added together, which tells you how much of Glasgow CityFibre and Virgin Media account for.

Openreach also names places, which is rare. Its Scottish release of 28 May 2024 begins its list of communities next in line with “People living in Port Glasgow in Inverclyde, Possil in Glasgow, Wester Hailes in Edinburgh”, and the table row for the city reads simply “Possil”. In July 2025 it added the warning that explains much of this page: “Thousands of flats and apartments in the city are also at risk of being left behind due to the need for wayleaves from landlords and property owners”. “Without these agreements, Openreach engineers can maintain the existing copper networks but cannot upgrade them to Full Fibre”, it says, and “Openreach is urging landlords and property managers across Glasgow to act swiftly”. Nationally it said “Openreach’s full fibre network now reaches more than 18 million properties”, and that “the company plans to extend this to 25 million homes and businesses by the end of 2026, with a belief it can reach as many as 30 million by the end of the decade”.

CityFibre, the second wire under most of the city

CityFibre is the full fibre network that Vodafone, Sky, TalkTalk and Zen also sell over, and Glasgow is its biggest single bet. In October 2021 it said “CityFibre’s total investment of £270m in Glasgow is one of the largest ever made for a city-wide Full Fibre rollout in Europe” and that “On completion the rollout will cover more than 540,000 premises across Glasgow City Region by 2025”, a plan that “spans seven of the local authority areas from Renfrewshire in the west”. By November 2022 it called it “The overall Glasgow project is CityFibre’s largest city-wide investment for full fibre deployment in the UK” and said “Services have gone live across the city region from Johnstone in the west to Rutherglen in the east, with many parts of Glasgow City Council’s area included too”. The last Glasgow-specific statement on its site is from 11 April 2024: “CityFibre has now laid 1,672km of full fibre internet beneath the streets of Glasgow”, which it put another way as “enough full fibre connecting the city’s homes to stretch the length of the River Clyde ten times”. Nothing since says whether the 2025 plan was met, and the 540,000 was always a regional number, not a city one.

Its releases do name neighbourhoods, which is useful. In March 2022: “Work has been going on south of the river for more than a year, and work in the north west of the city began last summer”, with the work then starting in Bishopbriggs. In October 2023: “the rollout is well underway between Thornliebank, Newton Mearns, Clarkston and Cambuslang”, and “In the north of the city, work is now progressing in Gilshochill, Blackhill and Clydebank”. The brands selling over it in the city were “launch partner Vodafone, TalkTalk and BrawBand” in 2022; its national provider list now runs to 44 companies, including Sky, TalkTalk, Vodafone and Zen. Which of them serves your close only shows once you check it, because, in CityFibre’s words, “Availability can occasionally vary between neighbouring properties”. Glasgow sits on its coverage page under the heading “Cities served by our network”, with Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Inverness and Stirling, and nationally it reported 4.8m premises passed and 1,108k customer connections in October 2026.

Virgin Media, on its own cable, and nexfibre, which stops at the boundary

Nobody sells on Virgin’s cable except Virgin. It has been in Glasgow longer than any other network on this page and publishes the least about it today: the address where its Glasgow page would sit answered “404 - Page not found” on 19 October 2026. Its own archive is the best it offers. In August 2018 it said “Virgin Media’s network now passes more than 500,000 premises across the Glasgow city region” and “Virgin Media has now connected almost 50,000 homes and businesses across the Glasgow city region”, naming homes “including those in Shettleston, Carluke, Paisley, Barrhead and Stepps”. In June 2020 it said “Virgin Media has connected 6,000 homes in Barmulloch and Cardonald, Glasgow”, built with “Full fibre to the premises (FTTP) technology with average top speeds of 516Mbps”. Nothing newer names the city, and nothing at all gives a Glasgow percentage.

Virgin’s second route into Scottish homes is nexfibre, a separate fibre builder whose network Virgin sells over. For Glasgow that route is not open: Glasgow does not appear in nexfibre’s current footprint in nexfibre’s coverage report for the end of December 2025. The entries nearest the city are Hamilton, Kilsyth, Milton of Campsie and Eaglesham, and even those carry nexfibre’s own warning that “locations listed as part of nexfibre’s existing footprint may or may not yet have services available and services may not be available to every premise in a particular location”. So if a Virgin salesperson promises fibre is coming to your close, ask which network, and if the answer is nexfibre, ask when the coverage report will say so.

Hyperoptic, which wires the building rather than the street

Hyperoptic builds to buildings, and in a city of high flats that ought to be the whole story, but it tells none of it. “We only deal in full fibre broadband, which means we offer fibre all the way to your building”, it says of itself, and “We focus exclusively on high density urban areas and cover 64 towns and cities in the UK”. Its site has no Glasgow page at all: on 19 October 2026 the address where one would sit answered “Page not found”. Nationally it claims “Our network now passes more than 2 million homes”, and inside the blocks it has wired its Fair Fibre social tariff is £13 a month for 150 Mbps. There is no list of those blocks; the postcode check is the list.

The builder at the edges

YouFibre, the retail brand on Netomnia’s network, says “YouFibre is bringing 100% full-fibre broadband to homes across central Scotland”. Its Scotland list names Coatbridge, Cumbernauld, East Kilbride and Hamilton, and not Glasgow, so it is a Lanarkshire story for now. Ofcom’s figure of 6 to 10 operators for the council area also counts business networks and small builders that publish no map at all, which is why no list, this one included, can stand in for the postcode check.

What is coming by 2029

Direct answer: Little more fibre and a lot more choice. Ofcom’s planned deployments file puts Glasgow at 94% of homes with full fibre by January 2029, up 2.2 points from January 2026, while South Lanarkshire goes from 70% to 97%. By then 80% of Glasgow homes are expected to have two or more gigabit networks at the door.

Every year Ofcom asks each builder where it intends to be in three years and adds the answers up by council. For Glasgow the January 2029 figure comes out at 94% for full fibre and 96% for gigabit-capable coverage, and the figure barely changes if you keep only the plans Ofcom rates ‘High Confidence’, those that “have reached both the low-level design stage and for which funding has been committed”: 96%. Solid plans, then, and few of them, because the city was wired early. The same file expects 6 to 10 gigabit-capable operators to be running in the council area by 2029, with 80% of homes able to pick between two or more and 45% between three or more, which is the real Glasgow dividend: not more fibre, but more companies competing for the same close. Scotland as a whole moves from 75% to 91% on the same plans, and the fastest risers around the city are South Lanarkshire and West Dunbartonshire.

The number that matters most for someone in the West End is the one Ofcom gives for postcodes with no gigabit-capable plan at all by January 2029: 314 in the council area. That is a small share of a city with 293,800 households, but if yours is one of them the next three years will not change it on their own, and the vouchers below are the route to ask about. Openreach’s own national plan, in its words from July 2025: “the company plans to extend this to 25 million homes and businesses by the end of 2026, with a belief it can reach as many as 30 million by the end of the decade”.

None of this is paid for with public money, and the records are clear about it. No Project Gigabit contract covers Glasgow City: the two Scottish entries in the gov.uk contracts collection are North East Scotland and Borders and East Lothian, and Ofcom’s row for Glasgow counts 35 planned new lines funded from the public purse, which for a city this size is a rounding error. The subsidy turns up at the edge of the city instead, and Openreach’s own telling of it is the best guide to how. In April 2025 it wrote about Baldernock: “The community is just six miles from the centre of Glasgow but had struggled with super-slow broadband for years”, and now “more than 400 households in Baldernock and neighbouring communities have access to some of the fastest, most reliable broadband in Europe”. How it was paid for: “Broadband vouchers from the UK Government that were supplemented by funding from the Scottish Government’s Scottish Broadband Voucher Scheme have enabled Openreach to bring faster, more reliable connections to rural communities”. The Scottish Government’s scheme for the hardest places is “Reaching 100% (R100) is a £600+ million Scottish Government programme”, which is “The R100 contracts are delivering around 113,000 connections”. If your Glasgow address cannot get a gigabit service, two vouchers are still open to you. The UK one: “Eligible homes and businesses can access vouchers worth up to £4,500”, provided “existing available broadband download speeds are less than 1Gbps”, under lot 39, Scotland (Central and North). The Scottish one: “The scheme currently provides a subsidy of up to £5,000 for eligible properties”, though it “will close to new applications on 20 November 2026”.

Your exchange and the copper switch-off

Direct answer: Glasgow had 30,653 telephone lines still to move off the old copper network in September 2026, 10.60% of its 289,111 lines, on Openreach’s count: the second-largest share of the ten cities it measured, behind only London. The old network goes dark at the end of January 2027, and seven city exchanges were named in Openreach’s 2026 copper stop sell rounds.

Glaswegians are being told about two different things and hearing one. The first is the switch-off of the old analogue phone network, which happens on one date everywhere: “On 31 January 2027, all traditional phone lines will be going digital - so it’s important to switch now.”, as Openreach puts it. The second is copper “stop sell”, which arrives exchange by exchange and only affects what a shop can sell you, not what you already have. The trigger, in Openreach’s definition, is that “Stop Sell is triggered when a majority (75%) of premises connected to a particular exchange can get ultrafast Full Fibre”. From that point, anyone moving in, switching or upgrading in that exchange area is sold a digital line over fibre rather than a copper one.

Glasgow is behind on the first change and ahead on the second. Openreach’s league table of 17 September 2026 counted 30,653 lines left to convert in the Glasgow area out of 289,111, which is 10.60%, and its own summary was blunt: “Trailing in the bottom five with the largest percentage of legacy lines still left to migrate, are London with around 13 per cent, followed by Glasgow with just over ten per cent”. Edinburgh was at 8.82% and Liverpool, the best of the ten, at 6.35%. The footnote matters: “Numbers calculated using Openreach regional patch data”, which takes in the wider postcode districts rather than the council area alone.

On stop sell, 2026 was Glasgow’s year. The round of 22 January 2026 named Loganswell, which serves Newton Mearns. The round of 15 May 2026 named four city exchanges at once, Shettleston, Pollok, Scotstoun and Langside, alongside Brediland in Paisley and Newton Mearns itself; that release said that by 5 June “rules will have been activated in 1432 exchanges across the UK”, meaning “around 14.2 million premises are under active Stop Sell”. The round of 27 July 2026 added Ibrox. The newest, on 8 October 2026, added Bridgeton and Merrylee, with Stepps alongside, and gave the national picture: by 5 November “rules will have been activated in 1663 exchanges across the UK”, by which point “around 16.4 million premises are under active Stop Sell”. The rest of the city’s exchanges were named in earlier years, so the complete list is Openreach’s own stop sells page, and our landline switch-off checker reads it for your line.

Seven of the eleven are inside the city. Stop sell affects what can be sold at the exchange, not what you have; the complete list, round by round, is on Openreach’s stop sells page, and our landline switch-off checker reads it for your line.

Your exchange appearing in that table changes nothing about the service you have this morning. What it changes is the next one: when you move, switch or upgrade, the line you get is digital and runs over fibre, and the copper one is retired behind you. The people who should move early rather than late are those with something else on the phone line: a care alarm, a health pendant, a monitored security alarm. A digital line goes quiet in a power cut unless there is a battery behind it, and our care alarm guide walks through what to test and who to tell. In a high flat, add the lift phone and the door entry system to the list of things to ask the housing office about.

Flats, closes and high-rises: who has to say yes

Direct answer: More Glasgow households live in flats than in any other council area in Scotland. The Scottish Government’s house condition survey puts it this way: “Glasgow City is the authority where households were most likely to live in flats (74%) rather than houses”, against 36% across Scotland. A network can pass the front of a close, or the foot of a tower, without serving a single flat in it until whoever owns the building agrees to let the cable in.

Openreach has said the quiet part out loud for Glasgow. “Thousands of flats and apartments in the city are also at risk of being left behind due to the need for wayleaves from landlords and property owners”, its July 2025 release warned, and “Without these agreements, Openreach engineers can maintain the existing copper networks but cannot upgrade them to Full Fibre”. Its answer was an appeal: “Openreach is urging landlords and property managers across Glasgow to act swiftly”. In October 2024 it had counted “More than 195,000 Glasgow properties already have access to Openreach’s ultrafast Full Fibre network, including over 80,000 flats and apartments”, which is to say that the flats are not the problem; the flats nobody has signed for are. The city’s building stock makes the point for it: “as low as 57% in Glasgow City and Edinburgh”, the same survey says, against “nearly three quarters of Scotland’s dwellings were built after 1945 (72%)”. Those older buildings are the sandstone closes of the West End, the Southside and the East End, which is where the two lowest area figures on this page sit.

Who signs depends on who owns the building. In a council or housing association block it is one landlord and one decision for everyone, which is why those blocks are often wired first. In a factored close it is the owners together, usually through the factor, and one absent owner can hold a stair up for a year. In a privately rented flat it is your landlord, and the ask is small: a wayleave costs the owner nothing and does not commit anyone to a contract. Three of our guides take it from there: the wayleave guide for owners and factors, a tenant’s rights to full fibre for when the landlord goes quiet, and switching in a rented property, which is the easy case: where a line already exists, changing the provider on it is your decision alone. If you are in halls, the rules are different again, and our student halls page covers them.

Cheaper broadband if you receive certain benefits

Direct answer: Four of the providers selling in Glasgow run a social tariff for anyone on Universal Credit, Pension Credit or certain other benefits, starting at £12.50 a month, and every one of them is bound by the same Ofcom rule: “It costs nothing to leave. You won't pay a fee to leave the tariff before the end of your contract.”

The cheapest of the four is tied to the network in your building, so start with that. Where Hyperoptic has wired the block, its Fair Fibre Plan is £13 a month for 150 Mbps. Where Virgin’s cable reaches, Essential Broadband is £12.50 a month on a rolling 30-day contract. On Openreach lines, BT Home Essentials is £16.50 a month, and Vodafone Essentials, which also sells over CityFibre, is £20 a month for up to 80 Mbps on a 12 months contract. Sky is the odd one out for anyone new to it: “Our Sky Broadband Basics offer is only available if you already have Sky Broadband with us”. Our social tariffs guide lists every tariff on Ofcom’s register with who qualifies, checked by hand. In a housing association block, one call to the housing office saves several to providers: ask which networks are already up the riser, because the tariff that is cheapest on paper is no use on a network that has not reached your landing.

For the 314 Glasgow postcodes Ofcom lists with no gigabit plan at all, there is a different kind of help, paid to the builder rather than to you. The UK Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme: “Eligible homes and businesses can access vouchers worth up to £4,500”, so long as “existing available broadband download speeds are less than 1Gbps”. The Scottish Broadband Voucher Scheme on top: “The scheme currently provides a subsidy of up to £5,000 for eligible properties”, but it “will close to new applications on 20 November 2026”, so the asking has to happen this autumn. Baldernock, six miles from George Square, is the local proof that a street which asks together gets built.

Look up your part of the city

Direct answer: Choose your area for its Ofcom figures and its rank out of eight. Nothing leaves your device.

What this page used to say

Direct answer: Four corrections to coverage numbers that had no source, and one to the map: the previous page recommended providers for Clydebank, Paisley, Giffnock, Rutherglen and Cambuslang as Glasgow neighbourhoods, and none of them is in the Glasgow City council area.

If you read the earlier version of this page, some of what it told you was wrong. It ran to eight thousand words, recommended providers for named neighbourhoods, quoted typical prices street by street, named a network, Lit Fibre, that publishes no Glasgow presence, and treated Clydebank, Paisley, Giffnock, Rutherglen and Cambuslang as parts of the city when each belongs to a different council. Its coverage percentages had no traceable source. We have deleted what could not be traced rather than softened it, and where an operator’s own statement contradicts something we said, the operator is quoted and our line is gone. It no longer names a “best” provider for Shawlands or Dennistoun either, because that cannot be known without the address, and the check at the top is where that answer lives.

In short

1. Glasgow is one council and eight pieces: six of them above 90% for full fibre in January 2026, and two below, Glasgow Kelvin at 76% and Glasgow Shettleston at 84%, on Ofcom’s figures.
2. Across the council area, 92% of homes could get full fibre, against 75% for Scotland and 82% for the UK, which puts Glasgow fourth of Scotland’s 32 councils.
3. Take-up was 43% of covered premises, and Openreach put its own network’s figure at 27% in October 2024: on most Glasgow streets the fibre is in the pavement and not in the flat.
4. More Glasgow households live in flats than anywhere else in Scotland, 74%, and Openreach says thousands of them are waiting on a wayleave from a landlord or owner before they can be upgraded.
5. Openreach’s own Glasgow figure is 200,000 homes and businesses passed and “reaching over 60 per cent of properties”, as of July 2025. CityFibre’s newest Glasgow line is 1,672km of fibre laid, from April 2024. Virgin Media’s is from 2018, and Hyperoptic has no Glasgow page.
6. On the plans the operators gave Ofcom, full fibre reaches 94% of Glasgow homes by January 2029, up 2.2 points, while 80% of homes get a choice of two or more gigabit networks.
7. Glasgow had 30,653 lines still to move off the old copper network in September 2026, a larger share of its lines than any city Openreach measured except London, and seven city exchanges were named in 2026 stop sell rounds. The whole telephone network goes digital on 31 January 2027.
8. The only Glasgow coverage percentage any operator publishes is Openreach’s, for Openreach’s wires. Everything else here is Ofcom’s, and none of it is as true for you as what your own postcode returns.

Each of those lines stands on its own with its date. Someone re-reads this page every quarter at the latest; the most recent read was 19 October 2026.