World Broadband Lines Top 1.56bn as UK Full Fibre Growth Slows in Q3 2025

New research from Point Topic has revealed that global fixed broadband lines grew by 1.46% or 22.42 million in Q3 2025 (up from 1.12% in Q2 2025) to total 1.56 billion connections. The subscriber growth rate of “full fibre” (FTTP/B) networks also remained strong in the UK at almost 7%, but this is down from 11.7% in Q4 2024.

Once again South and East Asia has continued to claim the largest share of global fixed broadband subscribers, having increased from 51.04% to 51.28% over the past quarter (they also accounted for 67.89% of all new lines added in the quarter), which is mainly due to China’s huge size. By comparison, the whole of Europe (inc. UK) only accounted for 17.13% of overall subscribers and 6.67% of quarterly net adds.

The data also confirms that, overall, both cable (hybrid fibre coax) and copper (ADSL, SDSL) based broadband connections continued to lose market share as full fibre lines cannibalised their customers. Between Q2 2025 and Q3 2025, copper-based broadband lines fell from 4.03% to 3.82% in Q3, while cable fell from 11.07% to 10.83% and hybrid fibre (FTTC etc.) fell from 8.45% to 8.21% over the same period.

On the flip side, full fibre FTTP/H/B lines saw their global market share increase from 72.61% to 73.09%, and it was a similar story for satellite (0.50% to 0.52%) and wireless networks (2.98% to 3.15%). “While the decline in legacy copper and part copper is not surprising, cable/HFC also appears to be on the way out in some markets,” said Point Topic.

The good news is that the United Kingdom continues to appear in the top table for country-specific quarterly growth of FTTP/B subscribers in Q3 2025, although our growth rate has slowed to nearly 7%. By comparison, the highest FTTH/B growth rates were found in Egypt (23.8%), Algeria (15.4%), Belgium (10.9%), South Africa (10.8%), and Greece (10.7%).

Top 10 markets by FTTH/B growth rates

The small market share of satellite solutions is also masking the fact that new services, such as Starlink from SpaceX, have actually delivered significant growth. Satellite broadband subscribers saw a boost of 38.2% year-on-year. The largest markets remain the US (2.4m), Canada (0.6m), Brazil (0.4m) and Argentina (0.4m); estimated.