Telecoms giant BT Group has today published a brief trading update to the end of 2024, which reveals that Openreach added another 1 million premises in the last quarter (unchanged) to the coverage of their full fibre (FTTP) broadband ISP network (total 17m) and saw related take-up rise by 472k (net adds) to total 6m (stable at 35%). But total broadband lines fell by 208k as rivals continue to bite.
Take note that, since 2023, the BT Group now only publishes a short trading update in calendar Q1 and Q3, thus we only get a very limited summary this time around – the fuller reports come in Q2 and Q4. As such, we’ve opted to do a similarly brief update on the key details below.
In terms of the other headline changes, we seem to get an even thinner update than usual for this period, with no mention of the FTTP build rate etc. But the operator did say, when reflecting on that loss of 208,000 total broadband lines from their base, that over 80% of those line losses “occur where we have not built FTTP” (underlining their need to build quickly).
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Just for a quick comparison, Openreach lost 377k broadband lines in their previous half year results (H1 FY25) to Sept 2024, which suggests a slight acceleration in their losses when looking at this last quarter’s figure of 208k. We also get a limited BT Consumer (retail) specific breakdown below.
However, it’s worth contrasting these results against BT’s future targets for 2030, which among other things have predicted that their total labour force would shrink from 117,000 today to between 75,000 and 90,000 (i.e. many of the engineers they have now won’t be needed post-2030) and FTTP coverage would grow to between 25-30 million premises, while delivering take-up of around 40-55% (this will grow faster once the roll-out pace slows).
BT also holds a target of 13.0-14.5 million retail 5G mobile connections via EE, although for some reason the group never seems to issue much data on 5G specific progress in their smaller trading updates.
BT’s CEO, Allison Kirkby, said:
“Our ongoing modernisation continues at pace, delivering a further step-up in fibre build and take-up, customer satisfaction and EBITDA. Benefits from our cost transformation more than offset lower revenue outside the UK and weak handset sales.
Openreach again performed strongly with the highest ever full fibre build, passing more than 1 million premises for the fourth consecutive quarter, and connecting a new record of nearly half a million customers. Consumer returned to service revenue growth and continued to expand its full fibre and 5G customer bases. In Business, our core UK channels were stable. Cost transformation remains firmly on track, with excellent progress on both energy costs and productivity in the quarter.
We continue to make progress towards becoming fully focused on the UK, with the sale of our data centre business in Ireland. I am also very pleased to welcome Jon James to BT’s Executive Committee as the new CEO of a UK-centric BT Business, effective early March. This appointment enables Bas Burger to dedicate his time to the optimisation of our international business segment, which is progressing to plan.
BT’s continued delivery means we remain on track to deliver our financial outlook for this year and our cash flow inflection to c.£2.0bn in 2027 and c£3.0bn by the end of the decade.”
BT Group’s Dec 2024 Performance Summary
- Record FTTP build rate of over 1m premises passed in the quarter for a fourth consecutive quarter; FTTP footprint reached 17m premises, more than half of the UK; on track to pass 4.2m in FY25 and reach 25m by December 2026
- Record customer demand for Openreach FTTP with net adds of 472k in the quarter; total premises connected 6.0m with a growing take up rate of over 35%. Openreach total broadband lines fell by 208k, as we continue to see moderately higher competitor losses with a weaker overall broadband and new homes market; over 80% of our line losses occur where we have not built FTTP
- Openreach broadband ARPU in the quarter grew year on year by 6% to £16.1, ahead of the CPI price increases, driven by a greater FTTP take-up and speed mix
- Retail FTTP base grew by 33% year on year to 3.2m of which Consumer 3.0m and Business 0.2m
- Consumer service revenue returned to growth, up 0.4% year on year after a 1.3% decline in H1; service revenue growth was more than offset by a 12% decline in equipment revenue, mainly handset trading
- Consumer customer base relatively stable with broadband base down 40k quarter on quarter (0.5% decline); postpaid mobile base down 4k quarter on quarter (<0.1% decline)
- Consumer broadband ARPU down 1.2% year on year to £40.6; Consumer postpaid mobile ARPU up 5.7% year on year to £20.3
- Consumer fixed and mobile convergence grew in the quarter from 23.1% to 23.4%; 5G standalone launched in a further 16 new locations, bringing 5G standalone to over 30 major UK towns and cities; EE was named the winner of the umlaut connect 2025 Mobile Network Test in the UK for a 10th consecutive year
- Business revenues were stable in our core UK channels; £1.3bn contract signed with the Home Office to continue providing mobile services for the Emergency Services Network over the next seven years
- Cost transformation remains on track as we continue to create a simpler BT Group, delivering efficiencies across all units; energy usage in our networks was down 3% in the year-to-date and total labour resource down 3% year-on-year to 117k; we achieved an 11% reduction in year-to-date Openreach repair volumes
- BT Group NPS of 29.6, up 4.0pts during Q3, reflecting ongoing improvements in customer experience
Excellent cost control continues to deliver EBITDA growth:
- Q3 Adjusted revenue £5.2bn, down 3% year-on-year mainly due to continued challenging non-UK trading conditions in our Global and Portfolio channels and weaker handset trading in Consumer, offsetting the impact of FTTP growth in Openreach and price increases. Reported revenue £5.2bn, down 3%
- Q3 Adjusted EBITDA £2.1bn, up 4% driven by strong cost transformation and one-off other operating income in the low tens of millions which more than offset adverse revenue
- Q3 Reported profit before tax of £427m, up 1% primarily due to EBITDA growth, offset partially by increased net finance costs and increased depreciation and amortisation
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I guess those pesky ALTNETS with their mostly symmetric speeds and usually cheaper prices are starting to take a bite out of BT’s legacy asymmetric GPON product after all. Article stated broadband lines, so taking this as meaning customers left the Openreach network completely, and in areas where FTTP had not been provisioned to them yet by Openreach (i.e. leaving FTTC/ADSL) for 80% as stated.
Not sure you’ve totally understood what BT actually said. OR FTTP takeup remains excellent, even in altnet overbuilt areas. When OR is only offering FTTC or less then, unsurprisingly, there are higher losses.
“80% of our losses are in non FTTP areas” is not the same as “altnets take 80% of customers”
If I had a choice of copper from Openreach or FTTP from an altnet I would be on an altnet – shows the importance of being first in the street. Do the math and you find that in areas Openreach have provisioned they have less than 1% average annual loss of customers based on the figures given.
@Big Dave: You’d go with the altnet instead of OR FTTC, understandable. Me too.
Question is, will you stick with the altnet when it’s contract renewal time and you can now get OR FTTP?
I can see altnet churn increasing when OR FTTP is available and being heavily marketed by BT Retail/EE, Sky, Vodafone etc.
@BD that’s what I thought too but when an altnet arrived in the area the customer service just trying to get an installation booked was so bad that I
decided not to bother. At least my BT based ISP picks up the phone when I call.
It is called choice, just a shame it is not in more places, I chat to people where they still only have Openreach network and don’t seem to be any news of any other network and even some of them are still on FTTC, either by choice or because they have no choice. One is still on ADSL, so close to the exchange, they get a good speed for a good price.
I left the Openreach network, I would have stayed if Plusnet did not push so much for me to go to FTTP. Now I have gone to one of those pesky Altnets 🙂 , I am glad I made the move, even if I am a bit worked about what will happen in the next 12 months or so with the merger.
BTivor and co won’t like it, their shares will go down.
just a shame more people don;lt realise they have a choice, even if they are stuck on a Openreach network, they still seem to stay with BT/EE for some strange reason where there are many cheaper providers that do the job fine.
My brother is with Shell, okay it is now Talk Talk sadly, but in all the time it was shell, it was fine, the router is not the best, in looks or features, but it works fine. At least it don’t have all the rubbish that BT/EE routers seem to have.
If I did not have an altnet here, I was ready to go with onestream or now broadband as 12-month contract and a good price and not forced onto FTTP, well now broadband did not at the time, but I think that have changed now
@Anonymouuse Would depend on service & price, I wouldn’t change back to Openreach just for the sake of it, unless I had received bad service or the price was much lower via Openreach. Actually I made a mistake when I did my calculation earlier, they are actually losing 2.7% of customers in fibre areas per annum (I based my calculation on available connections rather than actual customers) but then it would pretty weird if they didn’t start to lose customers when they stopped being a monopoly provider (excluding VMO2 areas of course).
@Anonymouse, We had FTTP from Openreach here more just after the Altnet and the Altnet still seems to be doing okay. Sure, some people who are already with providers using the Openreach FTTC network will change over to FTTP on the same ISP.
Some people don’t like change, I am one of them, takes me a lot to change.
This is my second year with Zzoomm, I renewed again last year, I could have changed last year, but stayed because it works, and the price is slightly better than ISP on the openreach network, but not by much.
It is just more hassle to get Openreach FTTP and to be honest i prefer to stay off their network if I can.
The other thing is, the Alt network I am off, have the same speed-up as down, so a better network.
I have another 5 months left on my 12-month contract, I expect I will stay, but we will see what happens now Zzoomm have merged with another provider. As long as the price stays okay and the reliability stay the same, then I will stay.
Hmmmmmm. Stick on 30mb/8mb fttc or move to 250mb vm (nexfibre) for less money? I mean vm service is dire but I’ll take a reliablity hit for nearly 10x faster speeds. Just a shame nothing else happened (got what was giganet lay but they are in merger hell and trooli just skipped our road).
Not sure about that, I rather a slower speed and reliability, that was why I was prepared to stay on FTTC, as over the 9 years I have been using FTTC, apart from one time, it has been reliable.
Oh dear, some of their decisions finally coming back to bite them! If they hadn’t messed about with G.Fast (some would say FTTC in general) they would probably have seen off some of the altnets as well as having a number of those areas seeing losses covered already.
The low ambition of Project Gigabit is another set of poor decisions that will come home to roost, too.
Of course the absence of FTTP from any network is offensive national under investment.
Let’s see if the government For Change can make any FTTP progress or if it’s just vague platitudes as usual..
’30 million FTTP connections out of 70 million UK population seems like a huge miss.
Such poverty of ambition.’ – Lonpfrb.
Fibre to homes and businesses not enough. We should all be walking around attached to fibre cabling.
No. If they had gone solely with FTTP early on the slower build rate would mean many people would still be stuck on ADSL. The purpose of FTTC was to deliver something better than ADSL in as short a time as possible.
I’m about to be one of those that moves away from BT/Openreach too. Going to an altnet that is cheaper, provides symmetric speeds and has local support that hasnt been outsourced to a call centre
Umm, depends on who it is, support at the provider I am with is not great, I thought being a smaller provider it would be better, but they work from home, but I suppose at least they don’t work in India. Saying that the one time I contacted them, they answered the question fine.
I just wish they would supply better routers, because it is that that is getting the bad reviews, people think it is the network, but with my own router, I have had no problems whatsoever.
I see another British Company downsizing (Selling off the Irish Data Centres) – what is it with British companies – why do they see they only way forward is sell-off bits / shrink down to a smaller company. No wonder UK PLC owns so little.
When I worked for BT the company was expanding – intending to buy MCI and hence into the USA market.
And don’t ask about their FTTP development in the early ’90’s when they were ready to start the manufacture of the customer premises equipment and role out and OfCom / HMG stopped it on ‘Competitive grounds’ – so instead of being a world leader we are struggling to catch up and the AltNets are thriving on HMG handouts.
It’s a blessing the early FTTP rollout was curtailed. It used TPoN and was only suitable for telephony and ISDN speeds. When Internet access took off from the late 90’s people connected to the network that was rolled out – Milton Keynes mainly – had to have copper lines installed to receive ADSL. It wasn’t a network designed for Internet because no-one much expected that to be a thing in the early 90’s – the expectation was for TV to be delivered over it as an alternative to the cable networks.
The global retreat – No-one has ever made money from it. The market is so cutthroat and the customers so good at beating down price that it’s hard to keep playing. Vast amounts are spent to build coverage of new services to the places customers want them and something new always comes along before the previous generation has paid for itself. IMO it’s a brave but correct choice, especially with the cost of borrowing heading upwards.
We have a risk averse and short term culture here sadly, most successful projects get taken over, many liquidate, a practice PLC cultivates.
Graphcore sold to Nvidia.
Arm holdings to Softbank.
wasn’t TPON a hybrid with copper to the home, the main advantage to BT being that hundreds of pairs of expensive & heavy e-side copper could be replaced by a few fibres. Of course when ADSL came along they decided to put that copper in anyway, though that wasn’t the only possible upgrade path.
AT&T has overlaid PON onto FTTC infrastructure originally built by Bellsouth. That was a very fibre-deep network with fibre running outside most homes anyway. I believe it uses a different wavelength for the PON so that it didn’t clash with any remaining FTTC equipment still in use.
Don’t forget that the vast majority of altnet deployments are using Openreach physical infrastructure (ducts and poles) and would not have been viable without it.
You do have to credit the altnets with giving OR the kick up the backside needed to start a serious FTTP deployment. But sadly, the altnets are going to find slim pickings in the longer term. They will pick up a few techno-nerds who want 2G+ symmetric speeds, but for Mr and Mrs Average the only way they can gain share is by undercutting OR-based providers. That’s not a good recipe for recouping investment.
So glad I went for Cityfibre, not OR, Upload speeds are just as important and they can make them symmetric, even on GPON. before I moved to XGS PON, I was on 900/900 on GPON
OR do this at no additional cost to them, but they won’t
For the self-selecting group of people reading this website, upload speeds are important. For the remaining 95% of the general population, they don’t care.
But in any case, Openreach have announced that they will do symmetric on GPON from this April. Cost not yet known, and there is some confusion about whether it will be available initially only in “certain locations” or whether they are “going straight to launch”
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2024/08/openreach-reveal-uk-plan-to-launch-symmetric-1gbps-fttp-broadband.html
For most people the biggest bandwidth use is streaming (Netflix etc) so 150/30 is probably sufficient for most people at present although no doubt this will increase with time. I suspect 99% of the public have never even heard of GPON & XGS-PON never mind tell the difference between the two.
@NE555
Symmetry matters for the hybrid work force too as so much of the business application landscape is SaaS / PaaS where most content is not streaming.
So your point about 95% don’t care is true of Consumers, less for the WFH cadre. For those who work on media and other bulk content, Symmetry is a core requirement.
I do like the faster upload speeds, that is one thing I wish I had with FTTC, faster upload speeds instead of the measly 9Mb/s. Many people will not care about the higher upload speeds unless they are a content creator or send a lot of files to other computers.
Not sure if I really need 500Mb/s upload or download for that matter, in fact, I know I don’t need it and maybe when my contract ends, I will drop to a lower speed.
I’m waiting to get off Openreach. They ignored my street for some reason, and enabled the others around me so my only current choice is FTTC from them.
As soon as CityFibre or Nexfibre come along, I’m converting over!
Be even more when Openreach go on strike again (assuming the rumours over pay negotiations are true)
If they’ve started negotiating then it’s only recently, so any rumours are just that..I doubt there will be much appetite for IA on either side.
No IA over pay at the moment. Unfortunately, it’s the low level managers that have been shafted this time. No-one is happy in OR at the moment…..except senior management obviously
I’m sadly one of those guys that is stuck with FTTC and no sign of OR changing to FTTP in my area. On one positive note, an altnet is looking to install in my area soon so will be leaving OR to goto them I would be paying the same price but with father speeds. This i believe it the reason OR are dropping numbers, taking too long to get around the exchanges for FTTP.
Will attritional loss of 200K customers per quarter be enough to sustain the altnets when VM / nexfibre are also starting to eat their lunch? Seems like you’d need to be looking at 500K churn per quarter to make three networks viable.
VMO2, the elephant in the room. There has been an incredible radio silence since they announced going wholesale, you’d think there should be more details coming soon.
I think we’ll only end up with one or two Alt Nets in the end. Probably CF and Netomnia. How quickly will hinge on how long it takes VM to get other brands on board for wholesale.
The Nexfibre build is barely enough for VM to maintain customer numbers let alone eating anyone’s lunch.
Where I live, BT have no intention of serving us with full fibre at any point in the future so our postcode was included in the government contract for North Northumberland and Go Fibre now offer a gigabit service. Their 500mb services was just £3 more than the £32 I was paying Sky for FTTC
Given he number of Alt net BT are holding on to market share pretty well. What it does show is the inverse ie Alt nets are not gaining much market share
Excepting VMO2 areas they previously had a near 100% monopoly it would be pretty strange if they didn’t lose some market share to the altnets. Openreach have always said they didn’t expect to dominate like they had in the past. Problem for the altnets is that they have had to slow their build while Openreach have carried on apace which is going to make it even harder for the altnets to take customers away from them, the fact that less than 20% of Openreach losses come from areas they have already fibred bear this out.
Ifor one will be moving from bt and ee as both fail to provide me with an acceptable service. Less than 1mg wifi when it works and 2 bars on my mobile if I am lucky. They still charge me exactly the same as people enjoying v good service.no plans to upgrade me anytime soon. How long has broadband been around BT, you have had plenty of time to sort yourselves out. I M no longer going to accept your excuses for poor service and definately not going to miss out on offers to reduce my ev charging cost because of your unstable wifi no it isn’t my fault for living here it’s yours for not providing a service, water Co do british gas do and I have electricity. Satellite here I come, every thought of offering that BT, no of course not you carry on serving your urban areas and look after yourself.
there are likely more premises that can get decent broadband than can get mains gas. This is certainly the case in my area. That includes rural areas.
Mobile signal bars are largely meaningless for most users. If it works, it works.
Why would BT want to offer a satellite service? They’d make no money from it since they don’t own or operate any satellites.
How do you survive on 1 milligram of WiFi?
BT used to offer satellite broadband years ago before fibre rollout they only really offered in really rural areas. i doubt they will want to go back to it.
You understand this isn’t a BT website?
I have a symmetrical service with an altnet but it’s not been plain sailing. I also have an OR fttp line installed which is currently inactive. If I could get a symmetrical service over the OR fibre I would probably revert as the latency was much better on the OR network.