BT Group Loses 203K UK Broadband Lines and Grows FTTP to 23 Million Premises

The BT Group has published their H2 FY26 biannual results, which saw total half year revenues of £9,840m (up from £9,806m in H1) and another quarterly UK decline in Openreach’s broadband lines of -203k (down from -210k in Q3 FY26) – full year losses totalled 825k. But the network operator still grew their full fibre (FTTP) coverage by 2.608 million premises in H2 (vs 2.23m in H1) to total 23m.

The group’s consumer divisions – including BT, EE and Plusnet – reported being home to a total of 8,224 million broadband connections (up slightly from 8,210m in H1 FY26), which includes 4,168m FTTP customers (up from 3.677m). The business division also reported a total of 566,000 retail broadband lines (down from 576k) and 166,000 of those were FTTP (up from 144k). Finally, BT Wholesale supplied a total of 674,000 broadband lines to other ISPs (down from 688k) and 150,000 of those were FTTP (up from 131k).

In terms of consumer mobile connections, EE reported total mobile customers of 13.967m (up from 13.924m), including 11.529m using 5G (up from 11.199m). BT also reported that their fixed broadband consumers gobbled an average of 499.9GB (GigaBytes) of data per month (up from 444GB), which falls to 18.7GB for EE’s post-paid mobile users (up from 18.2GB).

Elsewhere, some 54.9% of BT’s fixed consumer base take a “superfast broadband” product (down from 59.1% in H1) and 42% have adopted one of their “ultrafast” products (up from 37.1%), which these days largely reflects FTTP cannibalising customers from slower FTTC and ADSL lines. ISPreview also noted that 26.6% of BT’s customers are now taking both mobile and broadband (converged), which is up from 25.9%.

Finally, BT confirmed that EE’s 5G Standalone (mobile broadband) network had so far been rolled out to cover over 73% of the population (up from 66%). The provider aims to reach 99% by the end of 2030.

Financial Highlights – BT’s Half-Yearly Change
* BT Group revenue = £9.840m (up/down from £9,806m in H1 FY26)
* BT Group total reported net debt = £19.966m (decreased from £20,853m)
* BT Group profit after tax = £426m (down from £651m)

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 2.608 million premises being added to their network coverage in H2 FY26 and that’s up from 2.3m in the previous half (total of 22.921m lines – inc. 6.3m in rural areas). As for take-up, some 8.773 million FTTP broadband connections have been made on Openreach’s network (up by 1.123m), which equates to a take-up of 38.27% (up from 37.66%) – this is a very healthy figure.

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 19.68m to 19.27m in the last half year (down by -414k vs -411k in the previous half). But as above, the latest quarterly fall did slow a bit.

Overall, Openreach saw full year broadband line losses of 825k, which is slightly better than their guidance. The operator currently expects losses of another c. 800k in FY27. Rival networks are continuing to bite.

Allison Kirkby, CEO of BT Group, said:

“FY26 was another year of strong delivery against BT’s strategy. We are building the UK’s digital backbone even faster and further, connecting the country like no one else and accelerating our transformation – and we know there is much more we can do, as we create a better BT for all of us.

Our record-breaking Openreach full fibre build hit its upgraded target and today reaches more than two thirds of UK homes and businesses, keeping us well on track for our 25 million milestone by the end of December. We extended our mobile leadership further, with EE winning best mobile network in three separate awards, bringing 5G+ to 73% of the population.

Customer satisfaction reached a new high, with increased demand for our next-generation products and networks. Openreach achieved record full fibre connections and reduced line losses. And by using all our brands – BT, EE and Plusnet – our Consumer division returned to customer growth across broadband, mobile and TV. Our Business division has secured significant customer wins as its transformation progresses – and we’ve completed five targeted non-core disposals as we reshape BT International.

We have delivered on our financial guidance and we are transforming ahead of plan, offsetting headwinds while successfully competing. Today we’re announcing an increased full year dividend of 8.32 pence per share and an updated dividend policy, and we are reiterating our guidance of sustained growth, including cash flow inflection to c. £2.0bn in FY27 and to c. £3.0bn by the end of the decade.”

At this point it’s important to highlight that Openreach’s rollout of FTTP lines will at some point start to slowly move away from its current peak rate of build and shift into a gradual ramp-down curve over the next few years. As their deployment pace slows, there will also be an inevitable rise in redundancies among engineers. But this is very much an expected phase of such a large build programme – there’s always a ramp up and a ramp down phase.

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.