CityFibre Report 730K UK Broadband Customers as FTTP Covers 4.6M Premises
The UK’s largest alternative full fibre (FTTP) broadband ISP network, CityFibre, has today published their latest results and revealed that they now cover 4.6 million premises and have seen record growth in customer connections, with 108,000 customers connected in Q3 2025 (up from 58k in Q2) to total 730,000.
CityFibre has long aspired to reach up to 8 million UK premises – representing c.30% of the UK, but their original target of hitting that by the end of 2025 will be missed. Instead, they’ve more recently been looking to boost coverage via greater consolidation of rival networks (here and here) and coverage expansion under c.£860m worth of Project Gigabit contracts (state aid), while also having to deal with some of the same pressures as many other networks (e.g. high interest rates, rising build costs and competition).
Despite those challenges, the operator recently secured a crucial UK funding agreement worth £2.3bn (here) and also saw major ISP Sky Broadband begin to offer services over their network to consumers at speeds of up to 5Gbps (here). The latter seems likely to be what has helped to give CityFibre a record quarter in customer growth.
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The operator has today also reported that their Q3 2025 revenue was £43m, (Q3 2024: £34m), with an annualised run rate of £172m, up 26% year-on-year. Adjusted EBITDA was £7.6m in Q3 2025, (Q3 2024: £1.4m) up more than five times year-on-year, and now at an annualised run rate of £30m.
Simon Holden, CEO of CityFibre, said:
“Our rate of customer growth has real momentum, with our ISP partners making the most of CityFibre’s market-leading services and growing across our full fibre network.
We are proving the strength of CityFibre’s wholesale business model as we reach an inflection point, with our recent financing providing the firepower to significantly expand our reach through acquisitions and bring world-class digital infrastructure to people, businesses and communities across the UK.”
As well as posting a limited and somewhat sanitised summary of their latest quarterly results, CityFibre have today also published their annual group accounts to the end of December 2024 (here). This reveals that total revenue for the year grew to £134m (2023: £100m), while their operating loss fell to £176.6m (2023: £213.8m) and Adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation) achieved a profit of £6m (2023: £55m loss).
However, underlying net finance costs, comprised of finance income of £72m and finance costs of £279m, did increase by £82m (2023: £125m) driven by increased use of their facility to support capital expenditure, combined with rising interest rates, the impact of which was partially mitigated by hedging arrangements in place.
The company also reported having total assets worth £4.75bn, total liabilities of £4.22bn and the average number of staff employed (including Directors) by the Group ended the year on 1,594 (2023: 1,876).
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Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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We are with Zen, via openreach, found out going through City Fibre, our money Bill will be cheeper, happy to report back how the install went.
Walking around the area I see a CityFibre install nearly every day now, rarely Openreach. I do believe Sky are driving pretty much all of this. It should be said most people will be switching from Virgin Media as the Openreach copper service here was very poor (though they have rolled out fibre now).
Cityfibre committed to building their network in North Tyneside in 2021, the build commenced in March 2021, a small part of the area was covered and the build stalled mid 2022 and to date hasn’t recommenced.
Checking their website using postcodes my address has been at the ‘coming soon’ stage for three years now. I don’t expect CityFibre in my area anytime soon and have little faith in the company and it’s touted expansions.
They stopped and started many times in Gloucester. I’ve given up on them too, but it’s less critical now that Openreach FTTP finally arrived this month. CityFibre would be notably cheaper for the equivalent service, but I can’t have it all!
Yeah they stopped the rollout near me last year, not Tyneside, and haven’t restarted (infuriatingly close that they’re an actual stone’s throw away). So last year OR did pass me and I’m now switching away from VM to them but I’m hoping that in 2 year’s time I’ll be able to switch to CF, but if not at least VM won’t be getting my money. OR’s copper line got me at most about 20Mb/s which is why I stayed with VM for so long at 500Mb/s but now on OR I have a £10pm cheaper 910Mb deal.
They activated around Wisbech (PE13) and, looks entering town as well. Great news for me as I gave up expecting Youfibre after 4 years of promises… . Upp was alternative, but it’s now Virgin. Anyway, they also not on my street.
P.s. looks also Quickline also planning to build in town, but they use CGNAT, expensive and only 24 month contract.
The run rate of customer connections is great, but they need 30% penetration across their networks. A few questions I think it’s fair to ask now – when will they reach 8m homes? Are they fully funded to get there? What’s the penetration in their oldest locations?
Those are now the only real questions that need answering before you can judge if they’re going to make it. The connection run rate suggests they are on the right path!
The investors have pumped in more money so they must believe they have a reasonable chance of making it. If they get to 8 million it’s likely to be by consolidation, having said that they have been talking about the “Great Altnet Consolidation” for at least the last 2.5 years and so far the activity has relatively small scale.
I know I sound like a broken record, but is there any evidence that they will bring live streets they dug and installed fibre but there is currently no service?
I’m one of these and currently have no FTTP at the moment. I feel like I’m living in the dark ages reading all these articles!
An uncomfortable mix of numbers.
Hopefully this is giving many customers in BDUK areas access to services that they struggled to get before.
It’ll be a little sad if the main impact is simply moving folk from OR to CF where fibre is overbuilt.