{"id":29121,"date":"2022-02-03T07:25:53","date_gmt":"2022-02-03T07:25:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ispreview.co.uk\/?p=29121"},"modified":"2022-02-03T08:00:45","modified_gmt":"2022-02-03T08:00:45","slug":"bt-results-fttp-hits-6-4-million-uk-premises-as-tv-joint-venture-agreed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ispreview.co.uk\/index.php\/2022\/02\/bt-results-fttp-hits-6-4-million-uk-premises-as-tv-joint-venture-agreed.html","title":{"rendered":"BT Results – FTTP Hits 6.4 Million UK Premises as TV Joint Venture Unveiled"},"content":{"rendered":"

The BT<\/a> Group has published their Q3 2021\/22 results, which saw Openreach<\/a> expand the coverage of gigabit Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP<\/a>) broadband to 6.44 million UK premises (up by +662K vs +615K in Q2) and BT<\/a> enter into “exclusive discussions<\/em>” with Discovery to create a 50:50 joint venture with BTSport and Eurosport UK.<\/p>\n

The big news today, at least for the BT<\/a> side of things, is that the operator has entered exclusive discussions with Discovery<\/strong> on a deal to create a new sport and entertainment offering for customers in the UK with Eurosport UK. Recent reports had indicated that BT might sell their TV sport business to DAZN<\/strong> to help fund their full fibre rollout, but it looks as if a Joint Venture<\/strong> (JV) with Discovery was more attractive.<\/p>\n

The new combined business will remain committed to retaining BT Sport’s existing major sports broadcast rights, while BT Sport customers will also gain access to Discovery’s sport and entertainment content, including the discovery+ app. BT Group are aiming to conclude the deal in early Q1 (financial) for the new company to be operational later this year.<\/p>\n

On top of all that BT has also reached an agreement, in principle, with arch broadcasting rival Sky for a new longer-term reciprocal channel supply deal to beyond 2030.<\/p>\n

NOTE:<\/strong> BT are investing \u00a315bn to help Openreach<\/a>’s full fibre network reach 25 million UK premises by December 2026 – 6.2 million of those will be in rural or semi-rural areas. The build is expected to hit a peak of c.75,000 premises per week (currently c.50,000 per week, which is up from 47.3k last quarter).<\/div>\n

Financial Highlights – BT’s Quarterly Change<\/strong><\/span>
\n* BT Group revenue = \u00a35,369m (up from \u00a35,238m)
\n* BT Group profit after tax = \u00a3455m (up from \u00a3429m)
\n* BT Group total net debt = \u00a317,741m (decreased from \u00a318,241m)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

BT doesn’t report full customer figures for their own retail broadband ISP division, except on their ultrafast services. BT Consumer reported that they had 1,053,000 FTTP<\/a> customers (up from 945,000 last quarter) and EE<\/a>’s “5G<\/a> Ready<\/em>” base now stands at 6.418 million (up from 5.279m).<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, some 81.1% of BT’s fixed consumer base now take a “superfast broadband<\/em>” service (down slightly from 81.9% last quarter) and this drops to 8.6% (up from 7.3%) for their “ultrafast broadband<\/em>” (100Mbps+) products – includes both G.fast<\/a> and FTTP<\/a>. We also noted that 21.5% of BT’s customers are also now taking both mobile and broadband (converged), which is down slightly from 21.7%.<\/p>\n

Openreach’s Network
\n<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n

The table below offers a breakdown of fixed line network coverage and take-up by technology on Openreach<\/a>’s UK network, which covers the totals for all ISPs that take their products combined (e.g. BT, Sky Broadband<\/a>, TalkTalk<\/a>, Zen Internet<\/a>, Vodafone<\/a> etc.).<\/p>\n

\"Openreach<\/p>\n

The rollout of full fibre (FTTP) lines has clearly continued to grow, with +662,000 premises being added in the quarter (up from +615K last quarter). As for take-up, we normally expect the rapid rollout of new networks to suppress take-up figures, but Openreach’s build continues to buck this trend. So far, 1.508 million FTTP connections have been made (up from 1.264m), which equates to a take-up of 23.41% (up from 21.87% last quarter).<\/p>\n

All of this represents good news for the rollout of FTTP, which needs to return good take-up in order to ensure investors and shareholders that it’s a bet worth taking. BT attributes the particularly strong quarterly improvement in take-up to Openreach’s new Equinox discount on wholesale prices, although not all ISPs have adopted that into their retail pricing yet (16 providers are using it).<\/p>\n

Openreach also noted that 2 million premises under their current FTTP coverage (out of 6.442m) are considered “rural”.<\/p>\n

Philip Jansen, CEO of BT Group, said:<\/strong><\/p>\n

“BT has had a good quarter with encouraging market share performance, and we continued to make significant improvements in customer service, although revenue from our enterprise divisions was softer than we expected.<\/p>\n

We had another record-breaking quarter on our full fibre build and a pleasing 37% increase in FTTP connections following the launch of Openreach\u2019s wholesale pricing offer. Our 5G<\/a> build is also on track and now covers over 40% of the UK population<\/strong> with independently verified network leadership.<\/p>\n

Today sees two important strategic partnership announcements on how BT moves forward in the fast-evolving content and TV business. The agreement in principle with Sky will provide our customers more choice and more flexibility for the next decade. Separately, we are excited at the prospect of a new joint venture between BT Sport and Eurosport UK as we enter into exclusive discussions with Discovery.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We also noted that BT Group’s capital expenditure was up 24% to \u00a33,752m, which is of course primarily due to investment in spectrum, FTTP and their mobile network (5G<\/a> upgrades, OpenRAN etc.).<\/p>\n

Finally, later this morning we are expecting Openreach to be able to confirm what we first reported last week, which is that 113 new locations (towns and villages) have been added to their FTTP broadband rollout plan (here<\/a>), although we’re a little surprised that this wasn’t mentioned in BT Group’s results.<\/p>\n

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