More than 5,000 homes and businesses on the Isle of Portland can now get Full Fibre over the Openreach network. The company says it has spent £1.5 million bringing the new cables to around 85% of the island’s properties.
Portland’s broadband has already become noticeably faster. Figures from the Fibredog UK Broadband Explorer show its typical download speed rising from 38.8Mbps in 2022 to 66Mbps in 2026. Most of that improvement has happened in the past two years.
Not everyone is enjoying faster broadband, however. Fibredog’s local broadband data for Portland includes 419 results from 2026, and 48% were below 30Mbps. That doesn’t tell us what each home could order. It tells us what people were actually receiving when those results were recorded.
Image Credit: Visit Dorset
The iconic Lighthouse at Portland Bill
The new network hasn’t changed every connection
Openreach says fewer than half of the Portland properties reached by its new network had switched to Full Fibre. Simply having new cables in the street doesn’t change the broadband inside your home. People remain on their existing packages until they choose something different.
Broadband evidence overview
Broadband evidence overview
Loading broadband evidence…
Source: fibredog.com
Choose a geographical area to populate the broadband overview
Once you have entered a UK postcode, town or city and selected Explore, this part of the tool, the broadband overview, will summarise the measured and reported broadband evidence for that geographical area.
It compares measured download and upload speeds, the real download range, tests below 30Mbps, latency, reported availability, changes over time, the size of the measurement evidence base and the broadband providers observed in the selected area.
That helps explain why Portland’s results remain so varied. The slowest tenth came in at 10.3Mbps or less, while the fastest tenth reached at least 248.9Mbps. Some people will still have older or cheaper packages, and Wi-Fi can also reduce the speed that finally reaches a phone, tablet or computer.
The real change for Portland is choice. Thousands more homes can now buy faster broadband from providers using the Openreach network. That won’t make every connection better overnight, but it gives people struggling with slow or unreliable broadband somewhere else to go.
