A photograph of the London business district skyline.
The Economic Impact of Internet Infrastructure: How Connectivity Drives Growth in the UK
The UK’s economy is off to a slow start in 2025. Bloomberg reports that it potentially experienced shrinkage in the fourth quarter of 2024, and the Bank of England adds that there’s now a 40% chance that the country is already in a technical recession. Analysts thus suggest that Chancellor Rachel Reeves implement a number of strategies, including cutting spending on public services. In today’s digital age, however, others recommend approaches that focus more on investing in technology.
Though digital transformation strategies powered by the likes of AI may be the first thing that comes to mind, the country’s economy can actually benefit more from going back to basics and focusing on improving internet connectivity. The UK currently ranks 51st in the world in terms of internet speed, one of the slowest among developed countries.
Given how reliant consumers, businesses, and the public sector are on the internet today, simply ensuring faster and more reliable connections can be enough to bolster the country’s economy.
Why the UK’s economy needs faster and more reliable internet
Improved productivity
One of the most immediate impacts of a slow internet connection lies in lost productivity. As things stand, the average UK employee loses over a workweek’s worth of time and roughly £494 worth of productivity annually. That compounds losses for businesses, as they end up missing out on around 38 hours of work productivity per employee. These losses hit smaller ventures the hardest, with SMEs in London alone losing a whopping £28 billion in revenue every year just because of slow broadband.
With international consulting firm Leyton finding that over 99.9% of the UK’s private sector is made up of SMEs, it’s clear just how much the state of internet connectivity in the country negatively impacts its economy—and, conversely, how much faster internet can aid growth instead of hinder it. Marketing efforts made with better connectivity alone would greatly benefit the economy given online advertising’s standing as a primary global economic driver. Given all the forms digital marketing campaigns can take—from emails and pay-per-click advertising to social media and affiliate marketing—having a fast internet connection can help businesses better expand their reach and drive sales.
Streamlined commerce
That leads to the fact that the UK now heavily relies on the internet to buy and sell products and services on a large scale. The only issue is that reliable connections are crucial not just for accessing the internet, but for keeping servers running and ensuring they don’t lag. Unfortunately, a January 2025 Airband report notes that the majority of internet connections in the UK still use traditional copper wires that are prone to corrosion—and, in turn, cause service disruptions. Those disruptions go on to impede online commerce, which now supports a significant portion of the country’s economy. This hurdle can be resolved by a switch to fibre optic cables, which can last decades longer than copper wires, prevent internet downtime, and facilitate a more continuous flow of commerce.
Enhanced cybersecurity
Given just how much of the country’s commercial endeavours now depend on internet connectivity, cybersecurity remains a serious economic concern. The UK is currently the third most targeted country in the world by cybercriminals, and Tripwire estimates that their attacks have cost businesses over £44 billion in the past five years alone. Those losses go beyond the monetary, as data breaches can damage both a company’s critical infrastructure and reputation. All these factors can affect the country’s long-term economic growth.
The faster and more reliable connections provided by fibre optic cables can help here, as well. Unlike copper wires, they use light rather than electricity to transmit data. That means their signals cannot easily be tampered with via electromagnetic interference. As such, simply switching to more modern internet infrastructure can help support a robust security strategy that upholds a business’ bottom line, improves customer and investor confidence—and ultimately encourages economic growth.
How the UK is responding to the need for better connectivity
Given the significant role fast and reliable connectivity can play in spurring economic growth, internet service providers (ISPs) across the UK have begun to offer alternatives to traditional copper wire connections. The result is full fibre internet, which uses the aforementioned optic fibre cables to future-proof internet infrastructure capable of transmitting a gigabit of data per second—rather than the usual megabits. The urgent demand for such connections means ISPs now provide a diverse range of full fibre plans, which allows them to differentiate their respective offerings while catering to a wider audience of British consumers.
Individuals and families, for example, can now choose from plans with different data allocations depending on their budget, household size, and usual internet tasks. Meanwhile, companies can benefit from full fibre business broadband. The dedicated plans offered by Zzoomm don’t impose data limits, boast steady and symmetric upload and download speeds even during peak usage times, and come with an additional WiFi 6 hub that ensures consistent connectivity even throughout larger properties. For eligible consumers and businesses in hard-to-reach parts of the country, public initiatives like Project Gigabit are available for upgrading internet infrastructure and making them full fibre-ready.
As more of the country starts to benefit from the increasing accessibility of gigafast and reliable connections, fewer consumers, employees, and businesses will be impacted by slower speeds and internet disruptions that affect their productivity and their ability to buy and sell products and services. The country can even use this improved connectivity as the basis for other tech-focused initiatives aimed at bolstering economic growth. As Project Gigabit nears completion, for example, Chancellor Reeves has seen fit to invest over £8 billion in comprehensive web service packages from Amazon, which aim to drive the economy by supporting 14,000 jobs annually in industries central to the local economy—including construction, engineering, telecommunications, and more—and put the latter in a better position for growth this year.
