Openreach Boost UK FTTP Rollout Pace as BT Broadband Customers Fall to 8.2M
The BT Group has today published their biannual full year (H2 FY25) results to March 2025, which reveals that Openreach’s full fibre (FTTP) network added 2.2 million premises to their UK coverage in H2 (up from 2.1m in H1) to cover 18.08m (4.9m in rural areas) and will accelerate its rollout by 20%. But broadband line losses to rivals hit 243k in the last quarter (up from 208k).
The group’s consumer divisions – including BT, EE and Plusnet – reported being home to a total of 8.198 million broadband connections (down from 8.234m in H1), which included 3.202m FTTP customers (up from 2.775m). BT’s business divisions similarly had 588k broadband connections (down from 609k) and 127k of those were FTTP lines (up from 112k). BT Wholesale also supplied a total of 697k broadband lines to other ISPs (up from 691k) and 93k of those were FTTP (up from 82k).
However, despite their Openreach division suffering another loss of broadband lines to rival networks, the network access provider continues to accelerate their roll-out of Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) technology and has pledged to up its build rate by 20% – reaching up to five million premises passed during the year to March 2026 (it’s currently at 4.3 million). This will help to hit their 25m target on time and push past it.
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In terms of consumer mobile connections, EE reported total mobile customers of 13.863m (up from 13.875m), including 10,806m using 5G (up from 10.468m). BT also reported that their fixed broadband consumers gobbled an average of 446.1GB (GigaBytes) of data per month (up from 436.5GB), which falls to 17GB for EE’s post-paid mobile users (up from 16.7GB).
Elsewhere, some 62.9% of BT’s fixed consumer base take a “superfast broadband” product (down from 66.8% in H1) and 32.6% (up from 28%) have adopted one of their “ultrafast” products, which these days largely reflects FTTP cannibalising customers from slower (FTTC and ADSL) packages. ISPreview also noted that 24.6% of BT’s customers are now taking both mobile and broadband (converged), which is up from 23.1%.
Finally, BT confirmed that EE’s 5G Standalone (mobile broadband) network had so far been rolled out across 50 major UK towns and cities, covering over 40% of the population.
Financial Highlights – BT’s Half-Yearly Change
* BT Group revenue = £10,232m (up from £10,138m in H1 FY25)
* BT Group total reported net debt = £(19,816)m (decreased from £(20,267)m)
* BT Group profit after tax = £299m (down from £755m)
Openreach’s Network
The table below offers a breakdown of fixed line network coverage and take-up by technology on Openreach’s UK network, which covers the totals for all ISPs that take their products combined (e.g. BT, Sky Broadband, TalkTalk, Zen Internet, Vodafone etc.).
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The rollout of their FTTP lines continues to grow, with 2.2 million premises being added to their network coverage in H2 and that’s up from 2.1m in H1. As for take-up, some 6.53 million FTTP broadband connections have been made on Openreach’s network (up by +1m from 5.53m), which equates to a take-up of 36.13% (up from 35%). The rapid rollout of a new network usually suppresses take-up figures, thus Openreach continues to do extremely well to buck that trend.
However, the above changes also highlight the challenge alternative networks are facing, although rivals have managed to peel plenty of consumers away from the industry giant’s older network – Openreach’s total broadband lines fell from 20.549m to 20.09m in the half and that’s down by 450k (vs 377k in H1).
Allison Kirkby, CEO of BT Group, said:
“BT Group delivered strong progress against its strategic priorities in FY25, as we stepped up the pace of build of the UK’s leading next generation networks. We set new record build and connect highs: our full fibre network now reaches more than 18m homes and businesses, with more than 6.5m already connected, and we were awarded the country’s best mobile network for the 11th year in a row recognising EE’s clear leadership in 5G. We also accelerated the pace of simplification and transformation, agreeing asset sales, improving customer satisfaction across all of our brands and business segments, and delivering over £900m of annualised cost savings.
Although revenue declined year-on-year driven mainly by lower international sales and handsets, strong cost control and a step-up in focus and transformation resulted in growth in both EBITDA and normalised free cash flow, allowing us to increase our dividend for FY25 by 2% to 8.16p per share.
The momentum in, and impact of, our full fibre programme is such that we are now raising our build target by 20% to up to 5m UK premises in FY26, keeping us comfortably on track to reach 25m by the end of 2026, while maintaining our cash flow guidance. We are now only one year away from our inflection to £2bn of normalised free cash flow, our target for FY27, and remain on track to deliver £3bn by the end of the decade.
With the leadership team now in place to take our strategy forward, I am confident that as we build and connect at pace, our transformation will accelerate and deliver a better BT for all of us – our customers, our colleagues, the country and our owners.”
Take note that BT now only publishes detailed results biannually for H1 and H2 (financial quarters), thus they release very little data for the other two quarters and that similarly means we will only be able to do two detailed reports – like the one above – twice every year.
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Just a quick reminder. BT introduced a new metric in 2023, which predicted that their total labour force would shrink from 130,000 to between 75,000 and 90,000 by 2030 (inc. subcontractors). The operator also predicted that Openreach’s FTTP coverage would grow to between 25-30 million premises and deliver take-up of between 40-55% by that same date. The latest report includes a quick progress update on this.
BT Group’s Progress Against Strategic Metrics:
• FTTP premises passed increased by 4.3m to 18.1m; target of 25-30m
• Openreach take-up increased to 36% and retail take-up increased by 0.8m to 3.4m; targets of 40-55% and 6.5-8.5m respectively
• 5G UK population coverage increased to 85% and 5G retail connections increased by 1.7m to 13.2m; targets of >98% and 13.0m-14.5m respectively
• Total labour resource decreased by 4k to 116k; target of 75-90k
• Group Net Promoter Score of 29.5; target of 30-35
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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It’ll be interesting to see what happens to Openreach’s figures once Sky finally starts connecting customers via CityFibre. We may see an acceleration of copper lines being lost in particular as many existing customers in CF areas will get access to a FTTP network for the first time and I expect Sky will mass migrate eligible customers.
BT group is clearly trying to manage the impact by accelerating FTTP network build and offering free migrations for existing customers moving from FTTC to FTTP on their network, but I suspect the loss of a chunk of Sky’s customer base will bite them hard. BT retail brands will need to perform well to keep the shareholders happy but that’s not what the figures show.
“I expect Sky will mass migrate eligible customers”
I very much doubt that, migrating a customer to an Altnet needs both parties to agree and is more than just an administrative exercise; And there are associated costs.
It’s wildly risky to migrate a customer to a new last mile provider without also getting that customer to sign a new contract that covers the life of the contract you’ve just signed.
You could almost bet on Sky pushing new contracts and renewals to those customers in CityFibre areas if it’s cheaper for Sky. Profit is everything at cash hungry Sky.
This could, over a couple of years really dent BT/Openreach. Its looks better for Sky too as symmetric packages and they can boast a better superior broadband service to an out of date asymmetric network like Brokenreach currently is (yes, aware some of the older parts of CityFibre are awaiting an uplift to XGS-PON, but majority is XGS-PON)
You say that but it’s exactly what TalkTalk did when they joined CityFibre. Wildly risky yes, but CityFibre clearly offered incentive to do so. Complaints were rife at TalkTalk as the customer migrations were booked without customer consent and only when engineers turned up at their door could they refuse.
At the end of the day if Sky is set to save hundreds of thousands of pounds a month in wholesale costs by mass migrating customers, guess what they’re going to do.
Surely it’s a win win, if cityfibre are available and cheaper, and offer a better service (symmetrical as standard), then most customers will be fairly pleased not to be stuck on the old openreach fibre tech.
Sky just need to sell the benefits
.
@Andrew = most customers don’t worry about the tech beyond their property as long as it works.
It’s actually quite an exciting time. The surf wave that is Sky, will hopefully cause Brokenreach to change its mind, as writing on the wall, and go XGS-PON or better and offer symmetric (without multiple tiers of pricing).
Come on, Brokenscreech! We’re still paying the “copper tax” here – paying 50% more for 80% less, compared with all these wondrous new fibre tariffs out there (mainly from altnets, rather than BT, of course). We’ve been promised for years now, but the map still shows nothing at all happening in our districts of the city. The biggest fibre desert for 50 miles around (the next nearest being, surprisingly, Oxford)!
so which altnet hasnt come and built to you — which is probably the main reason your trying to be funny and failing
One has been going decades and got the infrastructure (poles, ducts, exchanges) cheap from the tax payer, compared to starting fresh, and the other is having to fund from scratch. The latter is miles ahead of the other in terms of keeping up with technology and product and pricing. Yes, the latter is ALTNET. Give it some more time, and you’ll see growth to more difficult areas, maybe with some consolidation along the way….
@Anonymous, doesn’t PIA mean the Altnet does have access to the existing poles and ducts at a regulated price and therefore doesn’t have to ‘start from scratch’?
Wonder jyst how much cheaper BT offering could be if Ofcom restrictions on their base pricing campaigns was removed. From stories on ISPR it does appears everytime OR suggests a wholesale price reduction, Alatnets complain and they are not allowed to reduce the price.
That’s not the full picture. Firstly PIA is not offered cheap. Secondly, the ALTNET has to setup the company, get staff, have procedures defined, create/configure software to service customers, and they have to pay for routers, switches, optical nodes, and some like Netomnia, putting in their own backhaul. BT would have a lot of this to start with.
@anon – ‘BT would have a lot of this to start with.’ No. It had to buy and setup a FTTP network and pay for routers, switches, optical nodes etc.
Every altnet knew the business it was going into. And some are seeing 4 other full fibre suppliers in the same road.
Fairly good results overall – bad luck to those with an outright hatred of BT Group. Good to see Openreach going even bigger on its rollout, after all someone has to cover where the altnets won’t.
I do however have a serious question – how is the number of superfast homes passed going *up*? I take this to mean VDSL. I can’t imagine it’s all down to small scale new builds that have been built in VDSL areas (ie no new network build needed).
I assume the superfast passed number goes up where previously the speed was less than 30 Mb/s and now it’s more than that (almost certainly because of a FTTP upgrade).
The chart shows the number of VDSL connections going down so I don’t get that either. The only thing I can think is that some ISPs (e.g. Plusnet) have a FTTP tariff that equates to existing VDSL speeds so maybe that includes them. With more suppliers in the market it was inevitable that BT and Openreach were going lose customers, indeed they were expecting a take up rate of 40-55% of their FTTP network and mature builds are easily in that range.
“However, despite their Openreach division suffering another loss of broadband lines to rival networks…”
Excellent news. Stop deploying old GPON, offer symmetric at sensible pricing, not slicing it up into expensive tiers, and you might stand a chance, else, continue the decline. Most unusual to get decline so early into a new technology. Customers obviously see better products and pricing elsewhere.
Ben – but then it’d be in the “ultrafast FTTP” statistic. Even the poor old sods on ECI FTTP equipment (not used in new deployments for years) can get 300Mbit, which is still considered “ultrafast”
anonymous – no point rehashing the facts around OR’s highly successful strategy (with revenues and takeup levels no altnet gets close to matching), but it is worth repeating – again – that OR’s losses are generally in areas where they do not yet have FTTP. The number of people who want symmetric or obsess over technical standards would not move the needle at OR’s scale.
Though, as we know, they’re going to be putting up strong competition on that front in the near future. What will the altnets do then?
I don’t understand the complaint about tiers. Every network operator does this.
@Ivor I don’t know why you even bother arguing with anonymous, he just keeps playing the same record over & over again. Best just to ignore him, her or whatever his preferred pronoun is.
Yeah, it’s only OK for BT fan boys to have any say.
BT Ivor, you are not correct. Most ALTNETS do not have upload tiers.
They exist in a future Openreach strategy to milk customers so they go for the lowest tier. That’s all its there for. Offer the least and charge the most! No different from their landline days and ADSL fixed rates before competition gave better and BT then had to try and keep up. With ADSL it was ADSL2/2+ from competitors and phone side was cheaper calls and discounted packages on minutes.
It’s easy to see why BT Group are losing direct consumer subscribers.
Our area was cabled for FTTP months ago. I made repeated attempts to order a FTTP connection via Plusnet, EE and BT Business who all told me the area wasn’t cabled and an order couldn’t be raised – that’s despite the BT Wholesale Checker confirming Fibre was available to order up to 1.6gbps.
In the end I gave up and ordered via Vodafone – who will install it in 2 weeks time via Openreach.
Now, you really will upset the BT fans on here, and major shareholders like BT Ivor, with factual statements 🙂 BT could have had all the pie rather than a slice.
Same for me – BT ISPs claim fibre is not available. However despite ordering via Vodafone- nearly three months later – still no sign of FTTP! Currently on 5 engineer visits – all failed as required infrastructure (FTTP) is not there for engineers to connect me. Quite comical now watching them turn up scratching their heads looking for fibre!
Looks like I will soon have to try mobile broadband or starlink!
The product isn’t available via BT EE or Plusnet that’s likely why it’s not showing available yet via them and not on 1.6gb either. Would you be on a new build estate at all by any chance? Highly likely if it’s voda it’s via city fibre for sure is it not?
Mine is definitely Openreach and is 1960’s build. My installation is being finished as we speak! Ironiclally my neighbour who is with bt had also ordered FTTP and the engineer sent for their install has sorted mine. The BT engineer was more experienced and was able to get things sorted – such as pull fibre through from cabinet to edge of property and arrange for the dig trained engineer to complete the install. It made it easier to do the work for both properties at the same time. The engineers sent for my Vodafone install had all previously been contractors only able to carry out internal work not external.
I wonder if OpenReach will at some point aim for parity with altnet offerings. They tend to be cheaper across the board and many, if not most, offer symmetric speed – while many may not NEED it, it certainly looks good on marketing material.
We’re finally getting Openreach here, some neighbours are already able to order, but when I look at a friend of ours that just got Gigaclear 900Mbit symmetric for £34 a month, I can’t help but hope that our stay on an OpenReach line will be temporary.
If Openreach offered symmetrical service or even just higher than 110Mb, if they did like 300, 500 or something like a 1:2 or 1:3 offering then I’d stay with them as their last mile network just works. Sure it can be roughly £10 more a month then an altnet
Yes i agree. If BT or EE offered symmetrical speeds at a sensible price i wouldnt move either as my Openreach FTTP is brilliant apart from the upload speeds available, compared to Cityfibre.
As soon, Netomnia will go live or Nexfibre will be available over other providers (not interested in unreliable Virgin), will wave goodbye to OR as well. Only, because of poor upload speeds…. .
I would focus on in filling the gaps that alt nets have not done, for example the local altnet not done my road…
So there is no chance of losing customers as the altnet never laid fiber there in the first place.
If they did that, they’d be bust in 2 years. Honestly the level of ignorance and myopia on here is astonishing sometimes.
Lots of this all over the country, they are getting the majority from a street over minority sadly, and like the big gas and leccy situation a few years ago, when the grants and funding runs dry on all these smaller providers dries up then….well let’s just say hurry up and grab some BT shares when they drop sub 150 and hold them…2030 will be a good year you watch
Openreach have emailed to confirm fttp in Sheringham but checking on bt.com and plusnet.com shows no availability. Zen.co.uk however does, looks like zen actively updates their database whereas BT will get around to it when they have to…
Worth checking your own postcode and cabinet on the bbchecker site, likely your parts on city fibre or something already
Zen Internet do indeed show FTTP available via Openreach, but this is not available. I received email from Openreach in February stated full fiber was available to order. As a Zen Internet customer I saw on my account that it was available to order. On speaking to Zen this is not the case. Openreach say available but the systems via BT Wholesale state it’s not available. Zen Internet order systems state it’s not RFS. Openreach have jumped the gun stating availability. I see Virgin Media doing installs on my estate, Lightspeed are also now available to order. I will wait the year out and if no movement on availability them Openreach will lose my customer.
I never liked BT Group, never will.
I never guessed.
Really adding value with that comment. Thanks for your contribution. /s
Nah to be fair, many don’t like BT Group or its practices. Mainly shareholders (BT Ivor) and employees do and some fanboys because it says “British” in it’s name.
Comical as you’re likely on here now via an internet connection you wouldn’t have had if it wasn’t for them
Huh? Just because ISDN Home Highway was the only real product back then?
I don’t think BT had anything to do with cable TV companies offering broadband either, which was always faster than BT copper products.
BT were the second highest climber in the FTSE100 today and at a near 3 year high, so investors appear to happy with the results.
2030 will be a good year and a steady climb up there from early 26 onwards (when most smaller providers funding runs dry )
BT are getting desperate with their PR!
I received an email to say that they are building “soon” in my village but the Openreach website still states “by December 2026”!
Yeah had a couple of emails a year ago. Replaced two poles and an engineer went up the ladder (networks branded van) stuck a CBT up and then took it down again. Nothing since. I suspect a technicality of the pole being 1mm lower than they expected has caused down tools. The contractors said that road was to be done within one month, and the CBT was briefly put up 2 days after the poles were replaced. Mine says “end of December 2026” on the web site. I think they mean it too. Everything FTTP by BT is slow round here, yet the next town 3 miles down the road, BT whipped through. As different exchanges for the areas, probably different staff.
OR is just a tire bit to ate to the party, xgs being offered I ore and more locations and a it cheaper than OR prices, people wi go with whatever is the best technology / cheaper.
I do wonder what will happen with the Altnet users when the introductory prices end – e.g. Gigaclear base price now £18per month but after 18 months more than doubles.
I do agree with others that Ofcom should now allow BT to be more flexible, aggressive with it’s pricing and narrow the price difference otherwise all that will be left is a financially broken company with the Universal Service Obligation serving the losers in the cherry picking war of UK telecoms.
And, yes, I’d like to see a price reduction on BT services but one can dream.