BT See Openreach UK Broadband Lines Fall by 242k as FTTP Covers 20.3M Premises

The BT Group has today published their H1 FY26 biannual results to Sept 2025, which reveals that Openreach’s full fibre (FTTP) network added 2.2 million premises to their UK coverage to total 20.3m (level with H2 FY25 growth); including 5.5m in rural areas. But broadband line losses to rivals jumped to 242k in the last quarter (up from 169k).

The group’s consumer divisions – including BT, EE and Plusnet – reported being home to a total of 8,210 million broadband connections (up slightly from 8.198m in H2 FY25), which included 3.677m FTTP customers (up from 3.202m). BT’s business division similarly had a total of 576k retail broadband lines (down from 595k) and 144k of those were FTTP lines. BT Wholesale also supplied a total of 688k broadband lines to other ISPs (down from 697k) and 131k of those were FTTP (up from 93k).

In terms of consumer mobile connections, EE reported total mobile customers of 13.924m (up from 13.863m), including 11.199m using 5G (up from 10.806m). BT also reported that their fixed broadband consumers gobbled an average of 444GB (GigaBytes) of data per month (down from 446.1GB), which falls to 18.2GB for EE’s post-paid mobile users (up from 17GB).

Elsewhere, some 59.1% of BT’s fixed consumer base take a “superfast broadband” product (down from 62.9% in H1) and 37.1% have adopted one of their “ultrafast” products (up from 32.6%), which these days largely reflects FTTP cannibalising customers from slower FTTC and ADSL lines. ISPreview also noted that 25.9% of BT’s customers are now taking both mobile and broadband (converged), which is up from 24.6%.

Finally, BT confirmed that EE’s 5G Standalone (mobile broadband) network had so far been rolled out to cover over 66% of the population (up from 40%). The provider aims to reach 99% by the end of 2030.

Financial Highlights – BT’s Half-Yearly Change
* BT Group revenue = £9,806m (down from £10,232m in H2 FY25)
* BT Group total reported net debt = £20,853 (increased from £19,816m)
* BT Group profit after tax = £651m (up from £299m)

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.).

The rollout of their FTTP lines continues to grow, with 2.23 million premises being added to their network coverage in H1 FY26 and that’s level with 2.2m in the previous half. As for take-up, some 7.65 million FTTP broadband connections have been made on Openreach’s network (up by 1.11m), which equates to a take-up of 37.66% (up from 36.13%). This is a healthy figure for the incumbent.

However, rival networks have managed to peel plenty of consumers away from the industry giant’s older network (mostly from the areas where OR has yet to build FTTP), with Openreach reporting that total broadband lines fell from 20.09m to 19.68m in the last half year (down by -411k vs -450k in the previous half). The latest bleed in customer lines may well have been given a boost by Sky Broadband’s launch of CityFibre based packages (here).

Allison Kirkby, CEO of BT Group, said:

“BT is delivering on its strategy in competitive markets. We’re building the UK’s digital backbone, connecting the country like no one else and accelerating our transformation. Openreach full fibre broadband now reaches more than 20 million homes and businesses and our award-winning EE network is live with 5G+ coverage for 66% of the population.

Since the start of the year, we’ve driven customer growth across Consumer broadband, mobile and TV and we’re stabilising our UK-focused Business division. Outside the UK, we’ve completed strategic exits and we’re reshaping our International unit. BT’s transformation is delivering ahead of plan, as our UK focus and radical simplification and modernisation are helping to offset declines from our International and legacy businesses and higher labour-related costs since the start of this tax year.

We remain on track to deliver our financial outlook for this year, our cash flow inflection to c.£2.0bn in FY27 and c.£3.0bn by the end of the decade, and we’re announcing an increased interim dividend to 2.45 pence per share.”

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 intervening quarters and that similarly means we will only be able to do two detailed reports – like the one above – twice every year.

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 2.2m to over 20m; target of 25-30m.

• Openreach take-up increased to 38% and retail take-up increased by 0.6m to 4.0m; targets of 40-55% and 6.5-8.5m respectively.

• 5G UK population coverage increased to 89% and 5G retail connections increased by 0.7m to 13.9m; targets of 99% and 13.0m-14.5m respectively.

• 5G+ population coverage increased to 66%; target of 99%.

• Total labour resource decreased by 5k to 111k; target of 75-90k.

• Group Net Promoter Score increased to 30.5, up 5.2pts year-on-year; target of 30-35.