UK Internet Use Has Actually Fallen Since Its 2021 Peak, Even as Mobile Hits Saturation Point
More people in the UK were online in 2021 than are online today. According to World Bank Open Data, internet use in the UK peaked at 96.2% of the population in 2021, then slipped back to 95.4% by 2023. It is a small drop, but it breaks the assumption that connectivity only ever moves in one direction. Meanwhile, mobile subscriptions have pushed past saturation point, sitting at 122.8 per 100 people in 2023, while fixed broadband subscriptions have barely moved, creeping from 38.7 to 41.4 per 100 people over the same seven years. Put together, these figures describe a country that looks fully connected on the surface, but whose connections are unevenly distributed and, in one case, quietly going backwards.
Internet use: near-universal, but not still climbing
In 2016, 94.8% of people in the UK used the internet, according to World Bank Open Data. That share rose steadily and hit its high point of 96.2% in 2021, the year most associated with lockdowns, home working and online schooling. Since then, the figure has actually eased down to 95.4% in 2023.
That 2021 peak followed by a fall is the most striking pattern in the data. It suggests that some of the people who came online during the pandemic, whether through necessity or circumstance, have since drifted away, or that the underlying population measured has shifted in a way that leaves a slightly smaller share connected. Either way, the direction of travel is no longer simply upward.
Even at 95.4%, a small but real slice of the UK population is not using the internet at all. This group matters. Everything from banking to benefits claims to healthcare appointments has moved online, and for the minority left out, being offline is not a lifestyle choice but a barrier to ordinary services.
Mobile: more connections than people
Mobile tells a completely different story. Subscriptions stood at 119.8 per 100 people in 2016 and had risen to 122.8 per 100 people by 2023, according to World Bank Open Data. Both figures are already above 100, meaning there have been more mobile subscriptions than people in the UK for years.
This is not evidence that everyone owns a phone twice over. It reflects the fact that many people hold more than one active subscription, a personal handset alongside a work phone, a second SIM for data, or a device used for something other than voice calls. The steady rise from 119.8 to 122.8 shows this pattern deepening slightly rather than reversing, even as the market was already well past the point where one subscription per person would be enough.
Mobile has effectively become the default way most people in the UK get online. It is the one part of this data set with no sign of a ceiling being reached, unlike the internet use figures above it.
Fixed broadband: the slow lane
Fixed broadband is the outlier. Subscriptions rose from 38.7 per 100 people in 2016 to just 41.4 per 100 people in 2023, according to World Bank Open Data. Over seven years in which internet use touched 96.2% and mobile subscriptions climbed past 122 per 100 people, fixed broadband moved by less than three points.
The gap between that 41.4 figure and the near-universal internet use rate is worth sitting with. It does not mean most households lack a fixed connection, since broadband subscriptions are typically shared across a whole household while internet use is measured per person, so the two figures are not directly comparable on a like-for-like basis. But the slow pace of growth is real regardless of how the comparison is framed. Where mobile subscriptions have kept expanding, fixed line take-up has barely shifted.
This matters because fixed broadband and mobile data are not simply interchangeable. Fixed connections tend to offer more reliable speeds for tasks like video calls, large downloads or multiple people using the internet in one home at the same time. A market where mobile is surging and fixed broadband is nearly flat points to a growing reliance on mobile data for jobs it was not originally designed to carry alone.
What the gap tells us
Read together, these four figures describe a country that has largely finished the job of getting people online, at least for now, given that internet use has already dipped from its 2021 high. It describes a mobile market so saturated that growth is now measured in fractions of a percentage point among subscriptions that already outnumber people. And it describes a fixed broadband market moving at a fraction of that pace, up from 38.7 to 41.4 per 100 people since 2016.
The open question is whether that gap narrows or simply becomes the UK’s new normal. Nothing in the World Bank Open Data figures says which way it will go, but the pattern so far is clear: near-universal, mobile saturated, and fixed broadband stuck in the slow lane.
The data
| Year | Internet users (%) | Mobile (per 100) | Broadband (per 100) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 94.8 | 119.8 | 38.7 |
| 2017 | 90.4 | 119.2 | 39.2 |
| 2018 | 90.7 | 118.2 | 39.8 |
| 2019 | 92.5 | 120.3 | 40.0 |
| 2020 | 94.8 | 117.3 | 40.6 |
| 2021 | 96.2 | 117.9 | 41.1 |
| 2022 | 95.5 | 119.8 | 41.3 |
| 2023 | 95.4 | 122.8 | 41.4 |
More from tech news on Morrow Tech.
Data: World Bank Open Data. View the dataset.
Sam Allcock is the founder and editor of Morrow Tech. He has spent over a decade in digital publishing and writes about the technology worth your attention, from AI to everyday gadgets.