Openreach Unable to Predict When UK Broadband Line Losses will Stop
The Deputy CEO of national network access provider Openreach (BT), Katie Milligan, has warned that until “the market really stabilises” then they won’t be able to predict when their current broadband line losses to rivals will stop (Openreach lost 707k in 2024 and expects to lose about 900,000 this financial year).
BT Group’s most recent trading update to the end June 2025 (Q1 FY26) revealed that Openreach lost another 169,000 total broadband lines to rival networks over the past quarter, which was mercifully down from 243k in the prior quarter. But the expectation is that the rate of losses for Q2 (H1) FY26 could pick up again, partly due to Sky Broadband’s recent partnership with CityFibre that already appears to be having a big impact (here).
Openreach has previously pointed out that most of these losses tend to come from areas where they’ve yet to deploy their new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network (i.e. those covered by copper-based ADSL/FTTC services), which is one of the key reasons why they’ve adopted such a rapid fibre build. A number of rivals initially did tend to target such areas with their own FTTP networks in order to gain a first-mover advantage.
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According to a new article in TheTimes (paywall), Milligan also indicated that line losses had been further fuelled by the cost-of-living crisis and a downturn in house building, which has pushed more households to get online via mobile broadband (e.g. Tethering from their handsets). But this aspect likely only accounts for a smaller portion of the losses.
Katie Milligan said:
“The whole point of people investing in fixed infrastructure was on the premise that the UK market would continue to grow both in terms of the number of customers adopting broadband but also as a result of house building and growth continuing, which hasn’t happened.
Until the market really stabilises and we know what the market growth or contraction is, we’re not going to call it.”
We’d disagree with Milligan’s “whole point” remark above. Once Openreach’s rivals started competitively building FTTP and delivering gigabit broadband at scale, then the incumbent either had to respond to that or risk a slow descent into obscurity by remaining reliant on their ageing copper line infrastructure, which could not keep competitive pace. Consumers also demanded faster and more reliable connectivity than copper lines could offer.
In terms of where Openreach might end up in the future. James Ratzer, an analyst at New Street Research, expects that Openreach may get a lower return on their fibre project than once expected and predicts that customer losses would continue until at least 2030. However, the CEO of BT Group, Allison Kirkby, has already recognised that they’ll end up with a “smaller market share, but it’ll be a more valuable modern-day asset” (here).
As Kirkby said back in May 2025, the group has “got to be competitive, rather than just accept that every line we can lose forever … BT needs to transform. We need to be a more modern day, more nimble company that moves faster … We were about half the productivity of our peers .. that’s what we had to address” (this reflects a lot of their network modernisation, redundancies and copper retirement work etc.).
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All of this helps to explain why the BT Group is currently lobbying Ofcom to further soften regulation in competitive areas so they can compete more effectively with often cheaper rivals, which is something the regulator has been examining as part of their 5-yearly Telecoms Market Review (TAR). As Openreach’s Mark Shurmer, MD of Regulatory Affairs, said: “[consumers are being] denied the benefits of competition … Prices are higher than they need be and they’re propping up inefficient entry in the market.”
Openreach’s rivals, many of which are carrying significant financial risks in order to take on the dominant players and are also under pressure from wider market strains (i.e. rising build costs, high interest rates, network competition), naturally disagree with the above viewpoint. Most tend to feel that allowing the incumbent too much freedom too soon could create an anti-competitive environment that chokes off their growth and might ultimately lead to a less competitive market.
As usual, Ofcom has the fun job of trying to find some balance between so many competing interests.
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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I know 3 households in my family, that have ditched any hope of BT FTTP in favour of symmetric services using a modern network of XGS-PON. Cheaper, latency even better than BT (not that BT was bad in that respect).
That Cityfibre Sky deal hasn’t even taken hold yet. It will take 2 years for people to renew Sky contracts and move over as part of it, and a while for new subscribers to sign-up. One this happens, it will really bite. I suspect Netomnia might do this at some point too, as will mean people who want TV can come onto their network who may currently hold off.
given your obsession with XGS and symmetric, I’d genuinely wonder how many of those three customers came up with their own decision to pursue an altnet vs being told by a relative that they absolutely must do so – assuming of course that it wasn’t simply a matter of pricing
Hello BT Ivor, my obsession with symmetric, yours with BT 🙂
The family had a number of metrics, BT failed most of them, except engineer readiness for fault call-outs. That’s what s good about competition (unless you are a BT shareholder) – those that love BT can have BT (assuming FTTP available) whilst those they want cheaper prices, symmetric services and more forward thinking in deployment of future network technologies can pick an ALTNET, if an ALNET is available and if they are a good one.
most people dont care if its symetric or not. using toob ( alt net as 1 example ) 900mb for £25pm ( no in contract price rises ) as opposed to fttc/sogea via EE 25.99 ( then 29.99, then 33.99 over 2 years ) i get 30mb . no brainer to go from 30mb to 900mb for cheaper per month+lots quicker with little to no hope ( your words ) of openreach full fibre, as no doubt your family households would have stayed with openreach if full fibre was available
Who said BT FTTP wasn’t available???
OK, invoke the next stage of the debate. IN CONTRACT PRICE RISES. With the rose smelling beautiful ALNETS, some do not have in contract price increases and the Netomnia lot, allow re-contracting at new customer pricing. BT or BT based ISPs failed on these at anywhere near the closest price to an ALTNET whilst others were more expensive anyway….
you did ( or thats how it reads ) “ditched any hope of bt fttp” , reads there isnt bt fttp. as i said its a no brainer with the price examples i quoted
‘Who said BT FTTP wasn’t available???’
You did.
‘I know 3 households in my family, that have ditched any hope of BT FTTP in favour of symmetric services using a modern network of XGS-PON’
You don’t hope for something you have or could have. Openreach only recently started really rolling out in Dover so tracks.
This stuff reminds me of CARPETBURN, all caps, who used to post on here under that and various other aliases often claiming to be a ‘truth teller’. Wrote the same kinda stuff on Think Broadband as well. Had a bunch of issues with some companies and was a bell to anyone who disagreed with his assessment.
Had a bit of an obsession with the companies he liked and they were unconditionally the best. Had a thing about BT back then, really wasn’t a fan. Had quite a big thing against Virgin Media, remember him telling an early 50 Mb customer they were lying about their latency and speeds even after proof was posted.
Unsurprisingly got banned from there, many comments deleted so can only find references to them, and the forums on here.
Can’t remember where it was but made a bit of a tool of himself getting pictures from the Internet and claiming it was his missus next to his projector.
Same inappropriate capitalisation of words, similar writing manner and he was even in Kent, too.
According to the recent story about Rebel joining CityFibre only about 25-30% of CityFibre’s network appears to be overbuilt with Openreach FTTP so I’m guessing most of the customers Sky are putting on CF were Openreach copper customers. Openreach’s own predictions for take up of its FTTP network were 40-55% so if they build to 30 million premises as they say they will do then they will probably still end up with 12-17 million customers.
The Sky 900 Symmetric for £25 eat into this massively as that is comfortably £10 cheaper than anything 900/110 on openreach.
I’m not sure the productivity argument is a valid one and could be an insight into a worrying desire to view something like engineering as a per-job resource that gets called on when needed, from a pool of external contractors, as opposed to a well trained and quality assessed workforce with institutional knowledge of the network they are responsible for.
Though renewal pricing and refusing to negotiate a retention discount, Sky is now effectively forcing their current out of contract FTTC/VDSL and remaining ADSL customers (all or almost all Openreach) to take FTTP (whichever is available/cheapest for Sky, Openreach or CF).
Having to make my first move in a long time because of this, including arranging to keep a landline number that is critical to my partner’s work (well publicised number). Oh and Sky staff are incorrectly implying that I won’t be able to port the landline number to a new provider, which is naughty.
if theres a stop sell on the openreach exchange, then thats why ie not making fttc/sogea available on renewal. last i read sky where doing a free upgrade to 100mb fttp from fttc/sogea anyways. yeah thats naught re the number porting