Summary of UK FTTP Broadband Build Progress by ISPs UPDATE265

A couple of years ago we published a ‘Summary of FTTP Rollout Plans‘ and since then many more alternative network (altnet) ISPs have entered the UK market. As such we felt as it might be useful to produce a more comprehensive update on current progress and providers for 2020 and beyond (we’ll try to keep this up-to-date).

The reason for all this focus on optical fibre networks is because they can carry a ridiculous amount of data down even a single thread of fibre (multi-Gigabit and possibly even Terabits in the distant future), which should mean that there’s plenty of capacity available for when we need it. Suffice to say that fibre optic cables are about as close to future-proof as you can get today.

Prior to 2019 the Government was busy incentivising providers to achieve 10 million premises passed with Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP / FTTH) style “full fibre” networks by the end of 2022, then 15 million by 2025 (here) and they held an aspiration to “deliver a nationwide full-fibre to the premises network” by 2033.

But in late 2019 the UK had a change of Prime Minister and Boris Johnson, after moving the goal posts around a few times, has since committed £5bn to help those in the hardest to reach final 20% of UK premises (mostly rural) to gain access to 1Gbps speeds (Project Gigabit) via a technologically neutral approach (FTTP, HFC and Fixed Wireless / 5G etc.). But the first contracts for this won’t be signed until mid-2022 or later.

The Government now aims to hit a minimum of 85% gigabit capable coverage by 2025 and then “nationwide” coverage by 2030 (here). On top of that they’re supporting a £1bn industry-led plan to grow geographic 4G mobile coverage to 95% by the end of 2025 (here), which may also boost rural 5G.

However, due to all of the above, nobody is quite sure how long it will take to achieve universal coverage of “full fibre” or even if that will ever be delivered, although internally the Government still seem to be very much focusing upon FTTP as the preferred solution. Meanwhile, the feverish pace of “full fibre” build is continuing to ramp-up.

A Quick Full Fibre Market Overview

According to Ofcom, some 53% of UK homes and businesses had access to a “full fibre” network in July 2023 (here), which is up from 45% in Jan 2023. The majority of that has been delivered by Openreach (BT) as part of their £15bn aim to cover 25 million by the end of 2026 (here), which is set to reach up to 30 million by 2030.

On top of that, Virgin Media (VMO2) are now extending their network with FTTP rather than Hybrid Fibre Coax (HFC) and they hold an ambition, via the nexfibre Joint Venture, to build FTTP to another c.5-7 million UK premises by 2027 (here and here), while at the same time also upgrading VMO2’s 14.3m HFC lines to FTTP by 2028 (here).

After Virgin, we have CityFibre, which already covers 3.5 million UK homes and aims to reach up to 8 million by 2025 or later (here and here). Then there’s Hyperoptic, which has around 1.4 million urban premises covered (FTTB / FTTP) and they aim to reach 2 million homes by sometime in 2024 – across parts of 57 towns and cities.

Finally, the mostly London focused CommunityFibre has covered 1.3 million premises and targets 2.2m. Local rival G.Network are following on c.400,000 premises and there’s also a mass of smaller full fibre altnet builders, with some of those expecting to achieve similar levels of coverage to the ones listed above. We’ve summarised each, including as much as we could find about their plans and progress, below (starting on page 2).

Summary of Full Fibre Network Builders (Updated: Apr 2024)

The following list is in a simplified alphabetical order by operator name, rather than an order by scale. Remember that it’s not uncommon for newer entrants, especially smaller players, to produce over-optimistic build forecasts and thus some forward plans below may not come to pass.

Flick over to page 2 to see the full list..