You appear to be using the term access to fibre a bit loosely. The vast majority[0] of the UK only has access to a product called "fibre to the cabinet" (FTTC), which is a poor substitute for what would pass for a fibre connection in most countries.
For those not from the UK, FTTC is a product where they run fibre connections to the local cabinet - however from there it runs over the end users phone line using VDSL2. For historical reasons this line may be aluminium instead of copper, and is often long with lots of splits and joins. As you can expect, this can degrade performance a great deal, and there's basically nothing an end user can do to get this upgraded. For PR reasons, these connections are named "Superfast broadband" and the regulator notes that 95% of the population can get one. However in practice due to old and badly maintained phone lines, real speeds are often much lower than the "minimum 30Mbps" they claim.
You're right, I'm using "fibre" loosely here. What I really mean is a connection that is an order of magnitude faster than ADSL/2+ and that solves the problem being complained about in the article.
For those not from the UK, FTTC is a product where they run fibre connections to the local cabinet - however from there it runs over the end users phone line using VDSL2. For historical reasons this line may be aluminium instead of copper, and is often long with lots of splits and joins. As you can expect, this can degrade performance a great deal, and there's basically nothing an end user can do to get this upgraded. For PR reasons, these connections are named "Superfast broadband" and the regulator notes that 95% of the population can get one. However in practice due to old and badly maintained phone lines, real speeds are often much lower than the "minimum 30Mbps" they claim.
0: As per https://www.increasebroadbandspeed.co.uk/broadband-statistic... only 8% of the population has access to "real" fibre to their actual premises.