Openreach Sees UK Full Fibre Broadband Traffic Grow 35 Percent in H1 2025
Network access provider Openreach (BT) has today revealed that broadband data traffic across their UK full fibre (FTTP) network alone increased by more than 35% between Jan and June 2025, compared to the same period in 2024. The busiest day so far was on 21st Feb, when a large Fortnite (video game) patch saw users gobble a total of 372PB (PetaBytes).
The operator typically supplies numerous broadband ISPs (e.g. TalkTalk, BT, Sky Broadband, Vodafone and hundreds more) across the country and as such their platform often sees the impact of major events, such as big software updates, online video game releases or live video streaming and sporting events.
However, while the 35% figure is impressive and shows how demand can rise when users get access to significantly faster internet connection speeds, it’s worth noting that overall traffic on Openreach’s national broadband network (all technologies included) only increased by a relatively pedestrian 5% in the same H1 timeframe.
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Peak usage across Openreach’s network typically continues to occur between 8pm and 10pm, when households are most actively streaming, gaming, and connecting multiple devices.
Openreach’s Top 5 Busiest Days for Broadband Usage in H1 2025
• 21 February – Fortnite patch release (372PB) – this was followed by
• 5 January – High weekend usage (357PB)
• 7 June – Fortnite patch 36.00 (351PB)
• 8 June – Continued Fortnite traffic (349PB)
• 1 January – New Year’s Day (346PB)
Katie Milligan, Deputy Chief Executive of Openreach, said:
“Our usage data shows how faster, more reliable connections are reshaping the UK’s digital habits. We’ve always been a data-hungry nation, but wider access to Full Fibre is enabling families and businesses to do more online – and do it faster, with fewer interruptions.
More than 7.5 million customers are already benefiting from this upgrade – using it to work from home, access education and healthcare, and enjoy seamless entertainment and gaming. But upgrades aren’t automatic, so that still leaves over 12 million homes missing out on a future-proof connection that’s available now with freedom to choose from the widest range of providers.”
At present Openreach’s new full fibre network has already covered around 20 million UK premises and the c. £15bn investment they’ve made into this should push that up to 25 million by December 2026, which is expected to be followed by “up to” 30 million come 2030. But the latter target is still somewhat dependent upon securing a favourable outcome from Ofcom’s current Telecoms Access Review 2026 (TAR).
Just for some extra context on data usage. At the end of 2024 Ofcom reported that the average monthly fixed broadband data usage was now 531GB (GigaBytes) per connection across “all technologies“, which rises to an average of 766GB when only looking at full-fibre connections.
Lest we forget that demand for data is constantly rising and broadband / mobile connections are forever getting faster, thus new peaks of usage are being set all the time by every ISP.
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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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So traffic on the legacy copper network is basically dropping like a stone. An overall increase in traffic is still impressive since they will be losing some customers to the altnets and VMO2/Nexfibre’s new build areas.
A reasonable guess would be that the first people to order FTTP when it is available will be the heavy users. The less demanding users will be those who don’t bother to change at this stage.
In my case I want off the vopper network – however the want of a vanity project and some mysterious 3rd parties indicating that due to concerns that openreach will do a ‘bodge job’ the management that runs my block shout NOT proceed to allow openrach to fibre the building up. Issues like this are causing headaches for Fibre companies trying to get us on the orrect standard.
We’ve been live for 4 years now in Banbury and Openreach are still installing at quite a rate. Also F&W/Hey Broadband seem to be picking up quite a few customers as well.
Are Openreach overreaching too fast?
You need a sound infrastructure that can cope with the demand and the pitfalls. So far I’m not impressed.
A pavement i pass everyday as been marked for several connections for at least 8 weeks the paint as nearly faded
We’re going live today, at freaking last! On one of the lowest tariffs (160/30), because that still more than doubles our speed for the same cost, on AASIP. Thank you, at last, Openreach, after all the others (hello, CityFibre) gave up on this area despite years of promises. I’m sure my son will notice the difference most, with his FS2024 habits (all those scenery and real-time weather downloads)!
Overall, our monthly download record so far is 546GB in this 3-person household, which is bang on-trend, it would seem.
I hope it all goes well, I forgot that AA is still limited on the data use, I thought they would have stopped that by now.
@Ad47uk – yes, their default (cheaper) tariffs still have a 1TB monthly quota. But you can go ‘effectively unlimited’ for an extra £10/month on all tiers. We’ll probably hit the cap and go unlimited eventually, but for now there’s no need. The extra speed will still be appreciated.
@A Stevens, I would not have a clue how much data I am using, I doubt it is 1TB a month for the most part, I expect I hit it a couple of months ago when I redid the PC.
I remember the days of worrying if I am getting close to going over the limit, glad those days have gone.
I think A&A are more for business users and not home users, as much as I love to use home-grown companies if I can and if they work out finically, sadly A&A is a bit more than I am prepared to pay, but if they work for you, then great.
I did support smaller broadband services years ago, even going off fixed line broadband to a wireless broadband service run by a local company, sadly it did not work out, they had too many customers and could not cope and towards the end of the 2 year contract the speed was slower than the 3Mb/s I used to have on ADSL, by that time FTTC was available, so I changed.
The local wireless network did not last muck longer after that, which was a shame because it was a good idea, using churches and our cathedral to mount the antennas on, and getting much faster broadband to people, certainly to those in the sticks. I went from 3Mb/s to 9, for 18 months or so anyway.
“Our usage data shows how faster, more reliable connections are reshaping the UK’s digital habits. We’ve always been a data-hungry nation, but wider access to Full Fibre is enabling families and businesses to do more online – and do it faster, with fewer interruptions.
So is she saying that their old system was unreliable? Most people will still do the same things on FTTP, for a lot of stuff it will make no difference, apart from game players. It is different these days to when a lot of people used to have computers in their houses, most just use their phone, maybe a tablet.
Streaming only uses so much bandwidth, and unless you have a load of people3 doing 4K at the same time, FTTP super duper speeds are not going to make any difference, unless they had a very bad FTTC connection.
I beg to differ.
Sky stream requires 25mbps minimum or you can’t order it. Make that two boxes and we hit 50mbps.
of course I know both boxes dont use anywhere near that much, howver you can’t tell sky that.
As more and more people join full fibre, services wont worry so much about compression and bitrates, often opting for higher bitrates (theres even a premium quality tier on youtube as well these days)
And yes I am merely metres away from the cabinet and my VDSL line crashed hard and stopped working.
had to get three engineers out (last guy was superb and a real credit to openreach), to get it running again.
Even though it now syncs at 80/20 there are still massive errors on my upload on the DSL stats.
I put that down to old / faulty building wiring which would be a massive job to investigate.
however no Full fibre. I wont repeat as I’ll sound like a broken record.
Given that PTSN ois dismissed mostly now – we shouldn’t have any holdups and IMO VDSL/DSL should have been dismissed long ago.
FTTP is obviously more reliable, I’m sure they can tell this by the number of support requests received.
For me, we’ve been on FTTP for around 4 years now, and only had one issue for about 24 hours which affected the local area. Compared to our old copper connection, it’s infinitely more reliable.
Agree with you JamesP.
Biggest difference is interference.
Fibre doesn’t suffer the crosstalk, old wiring, poor terminations* like copper does.
(*fibre does, but once terminated right, unless someone breaks it physically it’s not going to fail on fatigue and electrical interference)
Even you must realise that a full fibre network has less faults than a hybrid copper one?
@Benjamin, sky may require 25Mb/s, but I bet if you have two boxes and your broadband is not 50Mb/s they will not refuse the order.
I realise as more people have FTTP, then yes, we will have less compression and higher bitrates, but they still have to cater for people who don’t want the super-duper fast broadband or can’t afford it.
This is why I have said before about Freely, before they close Freeview, if they ever do, they need to make sure that everyone who wants to use it can with no extra cost.
My VDSL line had a problem a few years ago, took a fair bit of time to get sorted and never really got sorted at the time, we had a compromise, I used a Huawei modem with my router to keep online as the Huawei was the only thing that would connect, even Openreach own equipment would not.
I am about 500metres from the cabinet and apart from that, it worked okay. I had a look in the box once, I have a little connection box by the front door, that the cable comes into and then goes to a socket in the living room. Anyway, when I had a freezer delivered once, they knocked the top off the connection box as they came though the front door. So I had a peak and the cabling, I am shocked it worked at all. So I glued it back on, to be honest, I would like it removed and the phone socket.
@JamesP, of cause FTTP is goiong to be more reliable, it don’t have to rely on old copper cables that coupld be 50 years old or more, newer equipment, but it can still fail. Failed twice on me in just over two years.
But these things happens, nothing is perfect.
If I was not pushed like I was by Plusnet and if the altnet here did not stick a card in my letter box offering me a good deal, I expect I would still be on FTTC. I am happy with the service, it works, it is fast, not that it bothers me, but it is useful I must admit, more so now I can send files to other people who have FTTC.
Using Cerberus G.fast 150/30 and Aquiss 74/20 both throughput speed on download/upload have no issues at all throughout the year, no peak 8pm to 10pm slower down! Hat off to both ISPs and Openreach.
Everybody is using it more and more, but nobody wants to support that investment through getting a price rise.
Well, aksherly, those still on copper are supporting it via a price rise. It costs the ISP more. This may not be visible in retail prices, but it is visible in a different way. Look how many ISPs will no longer do new-supply ADSL where that is the only option available. And frequently no plans from anyone for fibre.
But do they *want* that price rise? That was my point, which you appear to have missed.
Even FTTC (and ADSL) customers have increased usage compared to, say, 5 years ago. It’s akin to wanting to drive at 100mph but only wanting to pay Fiat prices and not Ferrari.
Every isp at the moment that does FTTC/ADSL does the whole annual rise.
eventually Unless I recontract I’ll be hitting £50 a month, as of april next year I’ll be hittin £40 a month still incontract.
but looking at it now, not many are doing fresh contracts for less that £37… so if I recontract It’ll still go up but eventually I’ll be at £43…
Do I want that rise? no, because its poor value compared to what fibre brings. Do I have a choice? no, so I will have to lump it.
I could move home but mortgage is only 3.5 years old and financially can’t afford to move anywhere at the moment.
Why would anybody *want* a price rise? Investors are not charities. People will always try to pay the lowest price for the product they want. Investors are obviously looking for the biggest return. A free and competitive market will find the balance in pricing. Problems arise where there is a monopoly. Internet provision in the UK has both kinds of market depending on the geographic location which is why some people are getting fair prices and others are getting ripped off.