INCA – Alternative Full Fibre Networks Reach 16.4 Million UK Premises

The Independent Networks Co-operative Association (INCA) and Point Topic have published their 2025 report into the impact of alternative gigabit speed “full fibre” (FTTP/B) broadband networks on the UK. The study reveals that their coverage grew by 27% in 2024 to top 16.4 million premises (down from 57% in 2023 [12.9m]) and could grow to 18.6m in 2025.

Just to be clear on the coverage figures. INCA’s study excludes Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) deployments from the two largest operators – Openreach (BT) and Virgin Media (VMO2) – in order to focus on independent Altnets like CityFibre, Netomnia, Gigaclear, Hyperoptic, CommunityFibre and many more (Summary of UK Full Fibre Builds).

The new report finds that Altnets now cover a total of over 16.4m premises ready for service (up by 27% from 12.9m last year, but with growth slowing from 57%), which is around half of all UK premises. Furthermore, some 3m of those were in places classed by Ofcom as “Area 3” (i.e. mostly harder to reach rural locations), which is largely unchanged from last year and means that Altnets have delivered full fibre to nearly a third of UK premises in harder to reach rural areas. Take-up also stands at 16.5% (2.7 million live connections), which is up from 15% last year (2 million live connections) – an annual growth rate of 35%.

The previous report also included a future coverage forecast, which last year predicted that Altnets would be delivering to 16.7m premises by the end of 2024. But today’s finalised figure of 16.4m for that same period falls a tiny bit short of this target, which is sadly to be expected given how many network operators have cut jobs and slowed their build over the past couple of years.

The latest forecast is for Altnets to extend their coverage to reach 18.6m premises by the end of 2025 with over 3 million live connections, but there’s still some uncertainty about how this year might progress. Interest rates are falling (not as fast as hoped), which could improve access to funding, and recent consolidation may similarly give some operators a new lease of life to build. Time will tell.

Overall, there’s still plenty of build activity in the Altnet space and a lot more to come, but the 2024 period was clearly a challenging one – mostly due to the strains caused by rising costs (build, leases etc.), competition from rivals (e.g. overbuild, price discounts, growing take-up) and the difficulty of securing fresh investment while interest rates remained stubbornly high.

One possible caveat above is that there can be a tendency for some network operators to report technically unfinished or non-live builds (i.e. you can’t yet order a live service) as Ready for Service (RFS), which may cause complications when forecasting live coverage.

The analysis also claimed that entry-level ultrafast broadband (100Mbps+) services delivered by Altnets are, on average, 11.7% cheaper than those provided by BT. Additionally, it highlighted the growing consumer trust in independent providers, with 13 out of the top 20 ISPs ranked on Trustpilot being Altnets.

The Financial Impacts

According to INCA, investment in the Altnet sector continued throughout 2024 with an estimated £574m of additional funding being committed to network expansions during the year. Including this additional private investment capital, Altnets had committed £5.319bn to network expansions and operations for the 2024/2025 financial year.

However, we should point out that aspirational funding commitments are subject to significant change, much like the builds themselves, and thus should be viewed with caution. Some projects will fail, reduce or be consolidated, so we don’t expect all of this to be realised (accurately accounting for this is extremely difficult due to the lack of transparency from some operators).

However, taking this private sector investment together with the government’s £5bn Project Gigabit commitment (35 contracts worth £1.36bn have been awarded to 10 local or regional altnets – aiming to cover around 940,000 premises), as well as other planned full fibre investments (e.g. £4.5bn on VMO2’s nexfibre project and £15bn on Openreach), quickly highlights just how much investment is still flowing into the market. The vast majority of that is still private funding, which takes a lot of the strain away from the public purse.

The Most Pressing Issues for Altnets

Finally, in terms of the issues that AltNets think are the most pressing to tackle, it’s worth looking back at last year’s report to see what the top concerns were during 2023. According to last year’s report, the top concerns were – 1) Access to finance, 2) Switching between Openreach and independent networks e.g. through the One Touch Switching process, and, 3) Getting wayleaves.

By comparison, the top concerns in this year’s report are – 1) Current/future economic conditions, including access to finance, 2) Risks from Ofcom’s Telecoms Access Review (this was surveyed before we knew that the regulator wasn’t going to make major changes), and, 3) Overbuild by operators with Significant Market Power (Openreach or KCom).

Overall, Altnets are continuing to have a significant impact across the United Kingdom and that is set to continue for the foreseeable future, which is one of the reasons why major network operators are ramping-up their own builds (competition). But at the same time, there’s likely to be more consolidation in the market over the coming year as financial strains continue to bite.

Paddy Paddison, CEO of INCA, said:

“This is the moment we’ve been building towards. Altnets have already connected millions of homes and businesses, and while network expansion continues, the sector is now cashing in on its investment and widening its focus to help more customers make the transition.

Not long ago, if you lived beyond the big cities, fast, reliable broadband felt like a distant dream. Altnets have changed that – bringing full fibre to long-overlooked towns, villages and communities, and in doing so, driving real progress in UK connectivity.

And people are responding. Last year alone, almost three-quarters of a million customers chose to switch to an Altnet. The momentum is building – and this is just the beginning.”

It is also worth noting that Altnets have the more complex task of winning new customers onto their network, as opposed to the incumbents who can convert existing customers onto their full fibre services. On the flip side, Openreach reported 707,000 line losses between Dec 2023 and Dec 2024, which is said to roughly correlate to the 706,000 net additions seen by Altnets year-on-year.

Finally, the report includes its usual brief mention of Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) providers, which in the small print are estimated to cover more than 3 million premises (up from 2m), although not all will have a full speed service available. The fixed wireless access (FWA) market is more difficult to assess due to line-of-sight issues and fragmented supply in the sector.