Broadband in Greater London: all 33 boroughs compared

Check your address first

Direct answer: Seven companies build fibre in Greater London and none of them reaches every street, so the only true answer is the one your own address returns.

Everything below helps you read the result. It is worth doing in this order, because which networks reach you decides how much of the rest of this page applies to you at all.

Full fibre, borough by borough

Direct answer: In January 2026, full fibre reached 78% of homes across Greater London, from 90% in Barking and Dagenham down to 59% in Enfield, according to Ofcom.

Ofcom publishes coverage for every local authority in the UK twice a year, and the 33 London councils are all in it. The figures below are from its Spring 2026 update, published 13 May 2026 with data as at January 2026, and they count homes rather than all premises, so they sit on the same base as the UK headline of 82%. 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.” Its definition of gigabit-capable is “A network connection to a customer’s premises capable of delivering download speeds of 1 Gbit/s or more.” Gigabit-capable is the wider category, because it includes Virgin Media’s cable network as well as fibre.

Across the 33 councils, 78% of London homes could get full fibre in January 2026, which is below the UK figure of 82% on the same base, and 14 boroughs were at or above that UK line. Inner London, on the ONS definition of the 14 central authorities, came out at 81%; the 19 outer boroughs at 76%. Those two totals are ours, weighted by the number of homes in each borough, because Ofcom publishes borough rows rather than a London total. On gigabit-capable coverage, which adds Virgin Media’s cable, the spread runs from 96% in Barking and Dagenham to 80% in Barnet.

Full fibre and gigabit availability are the share of homes (residential premises) in each council area, Ofcom, January 2026, published 13 May 2026. Take-up is the share of premises with full fibre coverage that had an active full fibre line, all premises, same date. Households are from the 2021 Census (ONS). Tap a column heading to sort. “Inner” follows the ONS definition of Inner London.Swipe the table sideways for the households column.

Two cautions before you read your borough off that table. A borough figure is an average over something like a hundred thousand homes, and the streets inside it vary far more than the boroughs do between themselves. And “can get” is not “has got”: the take-up column shows how many of the homes that could order full fibre actually have, and that is where London’s story gets interesting.

Built but not bought: London’s take-up gap

Direct answer: Across Greater London, 43% of the premises that could get full fibre in January 2026 were actually using it, according to Ofcom. The rest are paying for something slower on a street where faster already exists.

Openreach said it plainly in March 2026, under the headline “London’s broadband divide widens”. Its figures: “Bexley leads the capital, with 47 per cent of homes that can get full fibre already upgraded.” And: “In Newham, almost two thirds of properties can access full fibre, yet only 15 per cent have taken a service.” It also named “Kensington and Chelsea, Newham, Ealing and Islington among the areas switching at the slowest rates.” Ofcom’s data tells the same story borough by borough: in Barking and Dagenham, 59% of the premises that could get full fibre had it in January 2026, and in Kensington and Chelsea the figure was 19%.

The UK figure is “47% of all premises with access to full fibre”, Ofcom’s own words for January 2026. London as a whole sits at 43% on our weighting of Ofcom’s borough rows, with inner London at 43% and outer London at 44%. Openreach’s national figure is blunter still: “only around 38 per cent of households that can order full fibre from Openreach have made the switch.”

The shape of the chart is worth a look. The two lowest take-up figures in London are in Kensington and Chelsea and Islington, both inner London boroughs, and the two highest are in Barking and Dagenham and Tower Hamlets. Coverage and take-up do not move together: Barking and Dagenham tops both tables, while Camden, fifth for coverage, had take-up of 26%, among the five lowest in London. Ofcom publishes the figures and not the reasons, so this page does not guess at them.

There is a second reason to care. Openreach stops selling copper broadband in an exchange area once three quarters of it can get full fibre, and the old telephone network switches off on 31 January 2027. Both are covered further down, because in London they are already happening.

The networks that build in Greater London

Direct answer: Openreach, Virgin Media with nexfibre, Community Fibre, Hyperoptic, G.Network and a handful of smaller builders. CityFibre, which is big in other cities, names no London borough on its own coverage list.

A broadband package has two parts that people run together: the company that bills you, and the physical network that carries the line. Several companies sell over one network, and in London a few sell over more than one. Here is what each network says about the capital, on its own website, with the date it said it.

Openreach, which almost every familiar name resells

BT, Sky, TalkTalk, Vodafone, EE, Plusnet and most smaller brands sell over Openreach, so it is the network most Londoners are on whether they know it or not. It is also the one operator that publishes a London figure and keeps it current. On 17 March 2026 it said “Openreach has rolled out gigabit-capable broadband to 2.3m properties in the capital.” That figure was “more than 1.29 million homes and businesses across the city” in May 2024 and “Openreach’s new Full Fibre network in London now reaches 1.75 million homes and businesses” in March 2025, so the build has moved quickly. Nationally Openreach says “Already, our Full Fibre network is available to 23.5 million premises, around 66 per cent of the UK”, as of July 2026.

Openreach also names boroughs, which is rare. In December 2024 it said “In Barking and Dagenham, more than eight out of 10 premises are able to upgrade to ultrafast” and that “Bexley, Redbridge, Hillingdon and Merton round off the top five.” In 2026 it signed agreements to wire council and housing-association flats in Enfield, where full fibre will be “made available to more than 1,500 properties across over 50 buildings initially”, and in Havering, where there are “more than 90,000 homes and businesses across Havering that already have access to full fibre through Openreach” but “just over 30 per cent of those who could upgrade have done so.”

Virgin Media, on its own cable and on nexfibre’s fibre

Virgin owns its cable network outright, so Virgin is the only company selling on it. In London it also sells over nexfibre, a separate full fibre builder, so a Virgin address can be either. On coverage it gives you nothing to check: Virgin Media publishes no coverage figure for London, or for any London borough, newer than February 2022. The newest London number on its newsroom is from February 2022, when it said “Since 2015, Virgin Media O2 has extended its footprint to reach 340,000 more premises through its Project Lightning programme in London, and made gigabit broadband available to more than 6 million Londoners.” Its standing caveat is “Virgin Media services are only available in eligible Virgin Media network areas.” Both of its gigabit tiers carry a selected-areas footnote too, Gig1 as “Gig1 Availability: Available in selected areas only” and Gig2 as “Gig2 Availability: Available in selected areas only (current % of eligible areas varies across our fibre and full fibre networks)”.

nexfibre does name London places. Its coverage report as at 31 December 2025 lists eight of them as part of its current footprint: Eltham, Falconwood, Hendon, Lambeth, Newham (London), Royal Arsenal, Thamesmead and Tower Hamlets. It adds 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.” By our reading of the map those eight sit in Greenwich, Bexley, Barnet, Lambeth, Newham and Tower Hamlets; nexfibre itself prints only the place names. Nationally it reports “more than 2,600,000 premises passed and ready for service (RFS) at 31 December 2025”.

Community Fibre, London’s own network

Community Fibre is the one big network that exists for London and nowhere else of note, and at a lot of addresses it is the cheapest route to full fibre. In its own words, “Community Fibre Limited is London’s largest 100% full fibre only broadband provider.” It says “our network passes more than 1.3 million premises” and that it is “offering affordable, reliable broadband across London and to thousands of residents in Surrey and West Sussex”. On customers: “With 450,000 customers - more than 1 in 5 Londoners are using Community Fibre.” It started in 2010, and “We began with pilot builds in Westminster social housing”. Vodafone’s announcement of its wholesale deal, from 12 June 2025, put the reach at “up to 1.3 million homes across the capital”, so if you buy Vodafone broadband in London it may well arrive on Community Fibre’s cable.

Two things to know before you order. Community Fibre publishes a postcode checker rather than a list of the boroughs it covers, so if you want to know whether it reaches you, the postcode check is the only way. And its prices move in a stated pattern: “At the end of your contract your price will increase by £4 versus your last month and £3 annually in April thereafter.” When we looked on 15 October 2026, 150 Mbps was £19 a month, and its Essential package is the one anyone can order: “For just £12.50/month, our Essential 35 Mbps social tariff broadband is available to all new customers - with no eligibility criteria to prove.” Every package is symmetric, in the words of its help centre: “By providing our fibre directly into your home, we ensure that you get the same upload and download speeds.”

Hyperoptic, which wires the building rather than the street

Hyperoptic started here: its timeline records that in 2011 “We launch the UK's first residential 1Gb broadband service in London”. Its model is the building, not the road. In its words, “We only deal in full fibre broadband, which means we offer fibre all the way to your building.” That matters in a city of flats, and it is why two neighbouring blocks can have completely different options. Nationally, in July 2026, it said its “Network has now passed two million homes and businesses, reaching the company's long-term target”. In the same results its “Customer base grew by 18% to over 440,000 subscribers, with average penetration of homes passed at 31%”.

Its London page names fourteen boroughs. North: “Our full fibre network covers areas like Islington, Camden, Haringey, and Barnet.” East: “Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Newham, and Waltham Forest”. South: “Lambeth, Southwark, and Greenwich are already living life in the hyper fast line.” West: “We're live in boroughs like Hammersmith and Fulham, Ealing, and Brent.” It gives no London premises count, only that “Thousands of homes and businesses across the capital are already connected to our hyper fast network”. Upload matches download on its packages, with a caveat: “Depending on your location, you can upload as fast as you download on our 150Mb, 500Mb & 1Gb packages.”

G.Network, in central London

G.Network builds its own fibre in the middle of the city. On 24 March 2026 it said “G.Network's full-fibre network passes over 420,000 premises across central London, one of the world's most commercially valuable markets.” The same release is where it describes what happened to the company: “G.Network, the full-fibre broadband operator serving businesses and residents in Central London, has successfully reorganised through administration, and moves forward on a debt-free, well-capitalised, growth-oriented footing.” It names no full borough list. In February 2024 it said it had “recommenced its build in Camden, Hackney, Islington and Kensington and Chelsea”, and its company page says “Currently we cover London's central activity zone and serve a wide range of customers with services offering speeds up to 10Gbps through an affordable range of offers.”

On price it takes the opposite line to the big brands: “No In-Contract Price Rises”, in its words, with the charge “fixed for the Committed Term”. When we looked in October 2026 its Home package was £14.50 for the first month, then £29 a month on a 24-month term. Its Essential Fibre social tariff is £15 a month on a 12-month term, for “London's low-income households in receipt of qualifying state benefits”.

CityFibre: not here, on its own account

This one surprises people, and it surprised us. CityFibre has built in more than sixty towns and cities and its network carries Sky, Vodafone, TalkTalk and Zen among 44 providers. But CityFibre names no Greater London borough or area anywhere on its own coverage list. The nearest places on its list are Potters Bar, St Albans, Slough, Luton, Chelmsford, Southend-on-Sea, Chatham and Gillingham, and Horsham, all outside the boundary. If you have read that Vodafone or Sky sell over CityFibre in a London borough, that is not something CityFibre says, and an earlier version of this page said it too. See what this page used to say.

The smaller builders

Zzoomm’s coverage page has one entry under the capital, “Greater London: Hornchurch”, and files Romford, Collier Row and Harold Hill under Essex, though all three are in the London Borough of Havering. YouFibre and its parent Netomnia, which between them reach “3,000,000 premises serviceable as of December 2025”, name no London borough or area at all, and neither do toob, 4th Utility or Trooli. For businesses rather than homes, Vorboss describes a London-only network with “1,400+ BUILDINGS CONNECTED”, and ITS says it “will build four high-capacity full fibre networks across the London Boroughs of Bromley, Lewisham, Merton, and Wandsworth”. Coverage from builders this size changes faster than any page can track, which is one more reason the postcode check beats a list, including this one.

What is coming by 2029

Direct answer: On the plans the operators gave Ofcom, 88% of London homes should be able to get full fibre by January 2029, up from 78% in January 2026. The largest rises are planned for Haringey, Hounslow and Enfield, the three boroughs with the least today. Nationally, Ofcom expects “the number of homes with access to full fibre will increase from 24.9 million (82%) as of January 2026 to 28.1 million by January 2029”, and gigabit coverage to reach “29 million homes (95%)”. For urban areas, which is where London sits, “the number of homes with gigabit-capable coverage in urban areas could increase from 24.2 million (93%)” to 25.3 million (97%) by January 2029.

Every year Ofcom asks the network builders for their plans and publishes what they add up to. The May 2026 edition is more cautious than the one before it: “full-fibre coverage by January 2028 is now projected to be 90%, down from 95% reported last year”, and “if only High Confidence plans are considered, full-fibre coverage could be 87% by January 2028”. The figure that matters most for a city with this many competing builders is choice, and there Ofcom expects that “73% of UK homes (22.2 million) will have access to at least two gigabit-capable networks” by the end of 2028.

Ofcom also publishes those plans borough by borough, and on our weighting of its 33 London rows they add up to full fibre at 88% of London homes by January 2029, up from 78% in January 2026, and gigabit-capable coverage at 94%. The gigabit figure is 94% when only the plans Ofcom rates ‘High Confidence’ are counted. Ofcom gives that label to plans that “have reached both the low-level design stage and for which funding has been committed”, so nearly everything planned for London has reached that stage. On choice, London is ahead of the country: 74% of London homes are expected to have two or more gigabit-capable networks at the door by January 2029, and 36% three or more.

The borough pattern is the one a reader near the bottom of the table will want to see. The three largest planned rises are in Haringey, from 61% to 85%; Hounslow, from 66% to 88%; and Enfield, from 59% to 79%, which are the three boroughs with the least full fibre today. The smallest planned rise is in Sutton, 79% today and 79% on the January 2029 plans, so a street there that cannot get full fibre now should not count on the next three years to change that. Ofcom also counts the postcodes where no home is expected to have gigabit-capable coverage even by January 2029: 6,646 across the 33 councils, with Barnet carrying the most at 655, which is one more reason to check the address rather than the borough.

Openreach’s own plan, in its words, is “We're rolling out Full Fibre broadband to 25 million homes and businesses by December 2026.” Nationally it says “Already, our Full Fibre network is available to 23.5 million premises, around 66 per cent of the UK”. nexfibre set out to build “a new full-fibre wholesale network to 5 million homes by 2026”. Community Fibre, by contrast, now says “we continue to do some limited infill build on premises close to our network”. None of those is a promise about your street, but together they say that if your borough is near the bottom of the table today, it is the builders’ target rather than their blind spot.

One thing London will not get is public money for the build. No Project Gigabit contract covers Greater London or any London borough, because the scheme pays to reach places the market will not, and London is the opposite case. Ofcom’s borough rows say the same in a single number: across all 33 councils, the count of planned new lines paid for from public funds is seven. The one exception is the voucher, covered below.

Your exchange and the copper switch-off

Direct answer: Openreach says “On 31 January 2027, all traditional phone lines will be going digital - so it's important to switch now.” Before that, exchange by exchange, it stops selling copper broadband once “Stop Sell is triggered when a majority (75%) of premises connected to a particular exchange can get ultrafast Full Fibre.”

Two things are happening at once and they get muddled. The first is the switch-off of the old analogue telephone network, which affects every landline in the country and has a single date. The second is “stop sell”, which Openreach runs one exchange at a time and which affects what you can buy rather than what you already have. In its own words, “The term stop sell is used by Openreach to signify stopping the sale of certain Openreach products.” It adds that “any end customer who already has the product, will be able to continue using it (until it is withdrawn).” By July 2026 it said “‘stop sell’ rules will have been activated in 1572 exchanges across the UK”.

Openreach announces each batch of exchanges in a news release, with a year’s notice, and the 2026 releases name eight Greater London exchanges. In January 2026: Ruislip in Hillingdon, Greenford in Ealing, South Clapham in Wandsworth, Edmonton in Enfield, Streatham in Lambeth and Romford South in Havering. In July 2026: Catford in Lewisham and Northolt in Hillingdon. ISPreview has reported two further batches that Openreach has not yet put on its own site. May 2026: Harefield in Hillingdon, Upton Park in Newham, Wembley in Brent, Parsons Green in Hammersmith and Fulham and Slade Green in Bexley. October 2026: Rushey Green in Lewisham and Walthamstow in Waltham Forest. Treat those seven as reported rather than confirmed.

If your exchange is on a list, nothing changes for the service you already have. What changes is that the next time you switch, upgrade or move, you will be offered a digital line over fibre rather than a copper one. Our landline switch-off checker tells you where your line stands, and the stop sell exchange list is kept up to date as each batch lands. If anyone in the home relies on a care alarm or a health pendant, read our care alarm guide before anything is switched, because those devices need testing on a digital line.

If you live in a flat, the building decides

Direct answer: In a London flat the street is the wrong unit. Openreach warned that “More than 600,000 flats and apartments in London could miss out on a vital Full Fibre broadband upgrade”, because fibre cannot enter a block without the freeholder’s permission.

London is where the flats are, and where the renters are: the English Housing Survey found that “In 2024-25, 28% of households in London were private renters, compared to 17% in the rest of England.” A network can pass the front of a block and still not serve it, because getting cables into shared parts of a building needs an agreement called a wayleave from whoever owns it. That is why Hyperoptic talks about buildings, why Openreach signs deals with councils for thousands of flats at a time, and why the postcode checker will sometimes show your neighbour an option it does not show you.

If you rent, you can still switch broadband, and you do not usually need your landlord’s say-so for a service on a line that already exists. Our guides to switching in a rented property and to your rights to full fibre as a tenant cover what you can ask for and what to do when a freeholder will not answer. If you own a flat, the wayleave guide explains what the management company is being asked to sign and why saying yes costs the building nothing.

Cheaper broadband if you receive certain benefits

Direct answer: If you receive Universal Credit, Pension Credit or certain other benefits, three London networks sell a social tariff from £12.50 a month, and one of them sells its cheapest package to anyone at all.

Community Fibre’s Essential package is £12.50 a month for 35 Mbps, on a 12-month contract with no mid-contract price increase and no set-up fee, and there are no eligibility criteria to prove: anyone its network reaches can take it. Hyperoptic’s Fair Fibre Plan is £13 a month for 150Mb for people receiving qualifying benefits at the addresses it serves, and in its words it is “Monthly rolling, cancel anytime with absolutely no exit fees.” Virgin Media’s Essential Broadband is “£12.50 a month” for 15Mbps, on a 30-day rolling contract, if you are receiving “Universal Credit, Pension Credit, Income Support, Income-based Jobseeker's Allowance† or Income-based Employment Support Allowance†”. The big Openreach brands have social tariffs too, and every one on Ofcom’s list is on our social tariffs guide, checked by hand.

One more London-specific pot of money: the government’s Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme lists Greater London as an area open to applications, with “Eligible homes and businesses can access vouchers worth up to £4,500” for homes and businesses whose current options are below 1Gbps. It is paid to the builder, not to you, and it only applies where a listed supplier is willing to build, but if you are in one of the lowest boroughs on the table above it is worth knowing it exists.

Look up your borough

Direct answer: Pick your borough and this shows its Ofcom figures, where it ranks out of 33, and which operators name it on their own sites. It runs on your device and sends nothing anywhere.

What this page used to say

Direct answer: Four corrections. The first is a confession rather than a reversal: the previous page’s two London coverage percentages had no source behind them, and when we built the total from Ofcom’s own rows one of them turned out to be right and the other a point high.

If you read the previous version of this page, some of what you read was wrong. It ran to more than seven thousand words, and a good deal of it was confident numbers with nothing behind them. Where a figure could not be traced to the operator or the regulator it is gone rather than rounded, and where an operator says something different from what we said, the operator’s words are quoted and ours are withdrawn.

In short

1. Greater London is 33 councils and they do not get the same broadband: full fibre ran from 90% in Barking and Dagenham to 59% in Enfield in January 2026, on Ofcom’s figures.
2. Across all 33, 78% of London homes could get full fibre, against 82% for the UK, on our weighting of Ofcom’s rows.
3. Only 43% of the premises that could get full fibre had taken it, so most London streets have something faster passing the door than the homes on them are using.
4. On the plans the operators gave Ofcom, 88% of London homes should be able to get full fibre by January 2029, and the largest rises are planned for Haringey, Hounslow and Enfield.
5. Openreach’s own London figure is 2.3m properties passed, as of March 2026, up from 1.29 million in May 2024.
6. Hyperoptic names fourteen boroughs, nexfibre names eight London places, G.Network passes “over 420,000 premises across central London”, and CityFibre names no London borough at all.
7. Eight Greater London exchanges were named in Openreach’s 2026 copper stop sell announcements, and the whole telephone network goes digital on 31 January 2027.
8. No operator publishes a London coverage percentage. Every one on this page is the regulator’s, and the only figure that is true for you is the one your own address returns.

Each line stands on its own and carries its date. Reviewed by a person at least quarterly, last on 17 October 2026.