Ofcom data for your area
Broadband in Edinburgh, November 2026
How many homes in Edinburgh can get full fibre and gigabit broadband, how that compares with the rest of the UK, and how to check your own postcode.
By The SimSift team · Updated · Ofcom data for January 2026
Quick answer: In the City of Edinburgh Council area, 84.1% of homes can get full fibre and 93% can get gigabit-capable broadband, according to Ofcom's January 2026 data. Across the UK it's 81.8% and 88.9%. That puts Edinburgh 155th of 361 UK council areas for full fibre, in the top half.
Sift's take: in Edinburgh the odds that you can get full fibre are fair, but the area figure can't tell you about your street. Check your postcode, then compare true monthly costs, not headline prices.
Check your postcode first
These are figures for the whole City of Edinburgh Council area. What you can get depends on your exact address: two houses on the same street can differ. Ofcom's checker is free, independent and shows every network at your address.
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What Ofcom's data says about Edinburgh
Full fibre: 230,350 of the area's 273,911 homes could order it in January 2026, 2.3 points above the UK figure for full fibre. That still leaves about 43,561 homes without it, so don't assume your street has it.
Gigabit-capable: 93%, 4.1 points above the UK figure for gigabit. The gap between gigabit (93%) and full fibre (84.1%) is mostly cable broadband, which can reach gigabit speeds without fibre to the home.
Slow lines: 98.5% of homes can get superfast broadband (30Mbit/s or more). Ofcom counts 568 homes in the area that can't get 10Mbit/s from a fixed line, and 29 that can't get decent broadband from a fixed line or fixed wireless.
How many have switched: where full fibre is available, 40% of premises (homes and businesses) actually use it. If you can get it and you're still on an older connection, it's worth checking whether full fibre would cost you less over the contract, not just whether it's faster.
How much people use: an average broadband connection in Edinburgh used 496GB a month in July 2025 (534GB on full fibre), against a middle figure of 559GB across UK council areas. Most home broadband deals have unlimited downloads, but check before you sign.
How Edinburgh compares with other big cities
| Council area | Full fibre | Gigabit-capable | Superfast (30Mbit/s+) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Leeds | 93.2% | 96.3% | 98.6% |
| Sheffield | 92.2% | 94.2% | 98.3% |
| Glasgow | 92% | 95.1% | 98.7% |
| Bradford | 91.9% | 96.3% | 98.9% |
| Cardiff | 88.7% | 96.4% | 99% |
| Liverpool | 88.1% | 92% | 96.6% |
| Manchester | 86.6% | 90.1% | 96.5% |
| Birmingham | 85.6% | 95.6% | 98.2% |
| Edinburgh | 84.1% | 93% | 98.5% |
| Bristol | 83.3% | 94.7% | 97.6% |
| UK | 81.8% | 88.9% | 98.1% |
What about prices?
We don't list broadband prices yet. We only show prices that come from a provider's official feed, and no broadband provider's feed is connected, so we'd rather show none than guess. Prices also depend on your address, so the only reliable price is the one a provider quotes for your postcode.
When you compare quotes, work out the true monthly cost: add any setup fee, use the price for every month of the minimum term (including when an intro price ends and any April rise in pounds and pence), then divide by the number of months. Our broadband guide explains it, and we've written up Sky and Onestream in plain English.
Where these figures come from
Coverage and take-up: Ofcom, Connected Nations update: Spring 2026 (data for January 2026, published 13 May 2026), residential premises in the City of Edinburgh Council area (council code S12000036). Take-up counts homes and businesses. Data usage: Ofcom, Connected Nations 2025 data downloads (July 2025). Rankings and comparisons are our own sums from those files. Contains Ofcom data © Ofcom copyright 2026, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Ofcom doesn't endorse SimSift. Ofcom updates these figures about twice a year, and we'll update this page when it does.