Top 16 Full Fibre Broadband Networks by Estimated UK Coverage UPDATE

The latest data from Thinkbroadband has provided an informative independent assessment of how big – in terms of network coverage (premises passed) – the top 16 largest Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband ISP networks in the UK have become by January 2024. In this article, we compare that data against official coverage claims.

One of the difficulties with keeping tabs on the rapid UK growth of full fibre broadband networks is that some operators often make coverage claims that are difficult to independently verify. This is relevant because, over the years, we’ve sometimes found that the official “premises passed” figures put out by some network operators may not entirely reflect reality.

For example, in some cases those figures could include part-built networks that aren’t fully live yet and, in other cases, the network may be technically built, but customers in some of the covered areas won’t be able to get it ordered or installed by an ISP (i.e. not yet truly “Ready for Service” – RFS). Similarly, providers sometimes make mistakes in their data (example).

The latest State of Broadband Report (Jan 2024) from TBB is thus extremely useful because we get a fairly up-to-date run down of how much coverage has been independently verified to exist (RFS) across the largest alternative network (AltNet) operators in the full fibre space. As a result, we can take TBB’s data below and then compare it with the official coverage claims from UK fibre operators.

Naturally, there are a few caveats to consider when doing this, which need to be reflected for the proper context. Firstly, TBB is not perfect, and they do sometimes miss bits and pieces of network coverage (please email them if you spot this). Secondly, conducting independent analysis of network builds like this is slow and laborious work, thus over the years we’ve tended to perceive that TBB’s latest data can be 2-3 months behind actual build.

Such a time lag, which is likely to vary between operators, may not seem like much, but it can create disproportionately large gaps between independent and official figures. Big gaps are most likely to occur during the early ramp-up phase of a new network build, where smaller networks may go from having a few tens of thousands of premises passed to hundreds of thousands, all within the space of a year (some networks are still in this phase).

In short, it’s wise not to make the mistake of automatically inferring that a big gap is because an AltNet may be overstating their coverage. In addition, we’ve also dated the official claims below as most operators only very occasionally provide an update on their build progress, which will thus be out of step with TBB’s latest modelling.

Top 16 Largest UK Full Fibre Networks by Coverage – Jan 2024

We aren’t going to micro analyse each operator above, but most of TBB’s real-world focused estimates of Ready for Service (RFS) coverage are roughly where we’d expect them to be when compared with official claims. But there are a few specific caveats to point out above for certain operators.

Firstly, Virgin Media’s network is currently in the middle of a major upgrade, which is seeing XGS-PON based FTTP being deployed into areas that could previously only access their Hybrid Fibre Coax (HFC) network. Currently, it’s a little bit difficult to track these XGS areas, and thus TBB has only included the figure for their older Radio Frequency Over Glass (RFOG) based FTTP build.

Meanwhile, the nexfibre build is technically a separate company and so gets its own entry, despite only selling packages via Virgin Media. The nexfibre figures also haven’t yet been updated to add 175,000 premises from Upp’s recent merger, but we’re expecting the company to do that in their next batch of quarterly results.

The TBB figure for FullFibre Limited should also be viewed cautiously because it doesn’t yet reflect the fact that they’ve just merged with Digital Infrastructure’s (BeFibre) network. Similarly, we suspect that AllPoints Fibre will appear on their list once TBB has updated their methodology to include the fact that Jurassic Fibre, Swish Fibre and Giganet have now merged into the one network.

Speaking of mergers, TBB has also missed out Freedom Fibre, which currently claims to have 285,000 premises passed after merging with VXFIBER (LilaConnect). But many of these mergers are fairly recent and it will take time for the internal changes to filter through into TBB’s modelling.

One other unusual entry above is G.Network’s TBB coverage figure, which has actually fallen, and we’re currently trying to find out why. But in any case, the real-world coverage remains well behind GN’s official claim from all the way back in 2022 (we haven’t had an updated one).

Finally, it’s important to remember that a lot of these FTTP networks are overbuilding rivals in different parts of the country, particularly around dense urban locations. But if we were to just look at the UK coverage of alternative networks (excluding Openreach, Virgin Media and KCOM) then they’d reach 30.78% of premises.

UPDATE 9am

According to TBB, the reason for the slight fall in their G.Network coverage figures this time around (from 255k to 248k) is because some of the homes in MDU buildings, where they were previously detected, can no longer order the service. But it’s unclear why that has occurred.