About 70% of UK homes have access to a gigabit connection through either fibre or the Virgin Media HFC network. FTTP coverage is about 40% nationwide. It’s not that rare.
When I lived in central London (tube zone 2), all that was available at my address was a wet-noodle quality 20 Mbps DSL connection. No BT FTTP, no Virgin, no Hyperoptic, no G.Network. This was in early 2022.
I now live in Switzerland and have a 25 Gbps FTTP connection, paying about 30% more than I paid in London for the DSL line.
It's a completely different world connectivity-wise.