BT Group see UK FTTP coverage top 24.1 million premises as broadband line losses slow

The BT Group has published their H1 FY27 results, which saw total revenues of £8,750m (down from £8,837m in H2 FY26) and a decline in Openreach’s broadband lines of -366k (down from -414k). But the network operator also grew their full fibre (FTTP) coverage to 24.1m premises (up by 1.19m vs 2.6m in H2 FY26) and now expect to reach their 25m FTTP target in March 2027 (slight delay from Dec 2026).

As usual, we’ll start off with a round-up of the headline figures, before summarising some of the other key details. For example, BT’s consumer divisions (inc. BT, EE and Plusnet) now have a total of 8.217 million residential broadband connections (down from 8.224m in H2 FY26) and 552,000 on business broadband (down from 566k). This will of course jump if the recent TalkTalk deal is given final approval by the government.

In terms of consumer mobile connections, the operator reported a total base of 14.053m customers (up from 13.967m), including 11.813m using 5G (up from 11.529m) – mostly via EE. BT also reported that their fixed broadband consumers gobbled an average of 505GB (GigaBytes) of data per month (up from 499.9GB), which falls to 20.9GB for EE’s post-paid mobile users (up from 18.7GB).

In addition, it’s worth remembering that EE aims to extend their 5G Standalone (5G+) mobile network to reach 99% of the UK’s population by the end of 2030 (not to be confused with geographic coverage). So far their 5G+ network coverage has grown to reach 81% of the population (up from 73%).

Summary of Key Figures (H1 FY27 vs H2 FY26)

Group Financial & Employee Totals

➤ BT Group revenue = £8,750m (down from £8,837m in H2 FY26)

➤ BT Group total reported net debt = £21,006m (increased from £19.966m)

➤ BT Group profit after tax = £835m (up from £472m)

➤ BT Group reported capital expenditure excluding spectrum = £2,282m (down from £2,616m)

➤ Total Labour Resource (excluding subcontracted labour) = 73,702 (down from 77,152)

Consumer Connectivity

➤ Average revenue per broadband customer per month = £40.8 (down from £41.5)

➤ Total broadband connections = 8.217m (up from 8.224m), including 4.742m on FTTP (up from 4.168m)

➤ Total postpaid mobile connections = 14.053m (up from 13.967m), with 11.813m on 5G (up from 11.529m)

➤ Customers taking broadband and mobile (converged) = 27.1% (up from 26.6%).

Business Connectivity

➤ External retail broadband lines = 552,000 (down from 566,000) and 185,000 of those were FTTP (down from 166k)

➤ External wholesale broadband lines = 663,000 (down from 674,000) and 171,000 of those were FTTP (up from 150,000)

➤ Ethernet lines = 149,000 (unchanged)

➤ Mobile customers = 4.416m (up from 4.415m)

➤ MVNO customers = 3.211m (up from 2.850m)

Openreach Network (used by many ISPs)

➤ Total FTTP coverage (premises passed) = 24.115m (up from 22.921m)

➤ Total broadband lines = 18.908m (down by 366k from 19.274m), including 9.901m on FTTP (up from 8.773m)

➤ FTTP take-up = 41% (up from 38.27%)

We should point out that Openreach’s FTTP take-up figure of 41% is very healthy for an operator that is continuing to expand their network at a rapid pace. On the flip side, rival alternative networks are clearly still managing to peel away plenty of customers from their older broadband networks (i.e. mostly from the areas where OR has yet to build FTTP). The previous full year results revealed that they lost a total of 825,000 broadband lines in FY 2026 and are expecting to lose another c.800k in FY27. The latest half yearly line losses of 366k support their rough c.800k expectation (i.e. the decline is gradually slowing).

Furthermore, it’s important to highlight that Openreach’s rollout of FTTP has already started to 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).

Allison Kirkby, CEO of BT Group, said:

“BT delivered a strong first half, with further strategic momentum in a competitive market, resulting in growth in revenue, EBITDA and customer satisfaction. We are building the UK’s digital backbone, connecting and protecting the country like no-one else, while accelerating our transformation as we create a better BT for all of us.

Openreach achieved record full fibre demand, with more than 10 million homes and businesses now connected and take up reaching 41%. BT and EE have been recognised as the UK’s best broadband and mobile networks, while more households are choosing our mobile and TV services together. And our growing order book in Business is supported by leadership in secure and sovereign connectivity solutions.

Our UK-centric strategy and transformation is clearly delivering with £312 million of annualised savings achieved in the first half, as we continue to simplify and modernise. Our proposed international joint venture with Verizon is progressing at pace, and we’ve also stepped up for the country with the acquisition of TalkTalk, protecting millions of customers while creating value for all our stakeholders.

We are reiterating our mid-term guidance, including normalised free cash flow of c.£3.0bn by the end of the decade. For this fiscal year, we are on track to deliver normalised free cash flow of c.£2.0bn, excluding the effects of the TalkTalk transaction. We’re also announcing an increased interim dividend to 2.5 pence per share.”

The fact that Openreach has suffered a slight delay to the completion of their 25m premises FTTP build target, in the grander scheme of things, isn’t a particularly big deal. In fairness we’re quite impressed that they got as close to being on-target as they did, given the current environment (competition, high interest rates, cost cutting etc.) and the tendency for complex FTTP builds to suffer delays.

The bigger question is now over when the Group will finally reveal their FTTP build plan for the 2027 to 2030 period and how close to that 30 million premises ambition they’ll actually get. The answer to that, we suspect, may now come sometime in the first half of 2027. In addition, we note that BT’s (EE) latest results mentioned that their consumer customer base was up 26,000 in pay TV, which is the first time we’ve seen a figure for their TV service in a while (they don’t give a total).

Finally, the operator’s “transformation programme” remains on track to deliver £3.5bn of gross annualised cost savings by FY30 on a continuing operations basis; in the six-month period £312m of savings were delivered taking cumulative total savings to £1.7bn at a cost to achieve of £0.8bn; operational efficiencies continued to improve year on year, with network energy usage down 7%, total labour resource down 11% to 90k (we assume this includes subcontractors), and Openreach repair volumes down 16%.

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. You could say much of that has technically already been achieved.

UPDATE 12:19pm

Openreach has responded on the issue of their FTTP build target being slightly delayed.

An Openreach spokesperson said:

“Demand for full fibre has been even stronger than we expected. So we’ve made a straightforward choice: rather than focus every available resource on hitting our December full fibre build target, we’re prioritising getting customers connected as quickly and smoothly as possible.

That means our build will run slightly more slowly for a short period, but we’ve already made full fibre available to more than 24 million homes and businesses and connected our 10 millionth customer in October. The 25 million milestone is now within touching distance, and we’ll reach it in March.

It’s a good problem to have. Our full fibre build is one of the UK’s most successful infrastructure stories, delivering at national scale and on budget, while more customers are choosing to connect to the network.”