Strong UK Take-up as FTTH Council Publish 2026 European Broadband Ranking UPDATE

The FTTH Council Europe and IDATE have today previewed their 2026 ranking of the 39 European countries (EU39) with the strongest take-up and coverage of gigabit-capable “full fibre” (FTTP/B) broadband networks. The data sees the UK pass 24.2 million homes (up by 2.79m in the year) with take-up of 48% (up from 37.1%). But coverage growth has slowed.

However, it’s important to note that, when compared with most of the other countries in the latest market panorama, the UK is still playing catch-up – others started deploying full fibre networks at scale many years earlier. The UK only began to appear (right at the bottom) of the council’s ranking seven years ago, but we’ve been making rapid progress since then and are still one of the fastest builders (Summary of Full Fibre Builds).

In terms of the annual change. At this time in 2021 the council reported that the UK had an FTTP growth rate (homes passed) of 1.7 million premises per year, which increased to 3.4m in 2022, 4.2m in 2023 and 4.7m in 2024 (+38%). After that it started falling to 4.2m in 2025 (+24.56%) and this year the rate of growth fell sharply to 2.79m (+13%). This means the UK is the 3rd fastest growing country – by volume (homes) – in the council’s latest EU39 ranking table (last year we were no.1).

At this point it’s worth noting that a fair number of alternative networks in the UK – under pressure from rising build costs, competition and high interest rates – have slowed their network build progress and cut jobs (often on several occasions) over the past few years. This helps to explain the slowdown in the country’s build rate.

Headline FTTH Stats for the UK (Sept 2025)

On the flip side the UK does still have the strongest growth in FTTH/B take-up by volume of subscribers in Europe, if not by percentage.

The vast majority of the UK’s full fibre coverage has so far been delivered by commercial builds in urban areas (e.g. Openreach’s build alone should hit 25 million premises by December 2026, and they’re just one of many players), while the Government’s state aid funded £5bn Project Gigabit aims to help tackle some of those in the final 10-20% of hardest to reach (e.g. rural) premises by 2032.

Just for a broader comparison with the United Kingdom, the EU39 countries currently have an average market penetration rate of 43.1% (up from 39.58% in the prior year), with coverage of 79.3% (up from 74.61%) and a take-up rate of 54.4% (up from 53.05%).

On the subject of take-up – markets where FTTP/B is already at a mature level of deployment will naturally have significantly higher take-up, while those where the technology is still in the process of rapid deployment often appear further behind (i.e. the pace of build is still fast and this suppresses the % take-up figure as more premises are being covered than adopting the service). The latter was the UK’s position before, but in 2025 we’re now seeing take-up rise at a faster rate than network build (premises passed).

Overall, the total number of homes passed with FTTP/B broadband networks in the 39 European countries surveyed has reached 295 million (up from 269m last year) and subscribers now stand at 160m (up from 143m). The top country for annual growth rates in terms of homes passed by volume is headed by Germany (+4.9m in 2025), while the top country for annual % growth rates is headed by Belgium (31.84%).

We expect to get a few more details tomorrow when the full report is published, but this does cover most of the key comparisons that people may find interesting. However, country-to-county comparisons never tell the whole story. For example, some countries have funded the deployment of fibre almost entirely from public money, while offering very little in the way of competition (e.g. weak consumer choice).

In addition, other countries have a significantly higher proportion of people living in large blocks of flats (e.g. Spain, Portugal), which are much cheaper and quicker to serve than those with a greater proportion of individual housing (e.g. UK). So be careful when taking a linear view of different countries as there are many significant market variations to consider.

UPDATE 17th March 2026 @ 12:13pm

The council have now published their full report, which includes a forecast for the future that indicates the UK will see FTTP/B subscriptions rise to 16 million by the end of 2026 (+39%) and 26.4m by 2031. In terms of homes passed (coverage), the UK is forecast to end 2026 on 26m (+19%) and then 31m by 2031.