{"id":31811,"date":"2022-11-03T07:43:54","date_gmt":"2022-11-03T07:43:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ispreview.co.uk\/?p=31811"},"modified":"2022-11-03T07:56:43","modified_gmt":"2022-11-03T07:56:43","slug":"bt-results-see-fttp-broadband-cover-8-8-million-uk-premises","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ispreview.co.uk\/index.php\/2022\/11\/bt-results-see-fttp-broadband-cover-8-8-million-uk-premises.html","title":{"rendered":"BT Results See FTTP Broadband Cover 8.8 Million UK Premises"},"content":{"rendered":"

The latest Q2 FY23 results to September 2022 have today been released by the BT<\/a> Group, which saw the coverage of Openreach<\/a>’s Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP<\/a>) broadband ISP network reach 8.76 million premises (up by 805k in the quarter vs 763k last quarter). Meanwhile, EE<\/a>’s 5G<\/a> customers topped 8.157<\/span> million (up from 7.74<\/span><\/span>m).<\/p>\n

Easily the biggest news this quarter has undoubtably been the ongoing strike action by tens of thousands of the operator’s employees (here<\/a>), which has continued through October and is slowly becoming more disruptive. In other news, BT<\/a> is taking Virgin Media<\/a> (VMO2) to court in a dispute over EE<\/a> MVNO mobile migrations (here<\/a>) and the government has dropped a security probe into Alice UK’s stake in the operator (here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

NOTE:<\/strong> Openreach<\/a>’s average FTTP<\/a> build rate has now reached 62,000 premises per week (up from 59,000 last quarter) and they’re investing \u00a315bn to cover 25 million UK premises by Dec 2026. Some 6.2 million of those will be in rural or semi-rural areas.<\/div>\n

On top of all that, Openreach<\/a> are preparing to test faster broadband tiers – 1.2Gbps<\/strong> and 1.8Gbps<\/strong> – on their FTTP<\/a> broadband network (here<\/a>) and BT<\/a>’s sub-brand, Plusnet<\/a>, has closed its manage broadband service with John Lewis to new customers (here<\/a>) – the writing may also be on the wall for Plusnet<\/a>’s own business products.<\/p>\n

Financial Highlights – BT’s Quarterly Change<\/strong><\/span>
\n* BT Group revenue = \u00a35,151<\/span><\/span>m (up from \u00a34,979<\/span><\/span><\/span>m)
\n* BT Group total net debt = \u00a319,042<\/span><\/span>m (increased from \u00a318,891<\/span><\/span>m)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

BT’s (EE<\/a>) consumer division does not publish full customer figures for their own retail broadband ISP, but they do report data for their “ultrafast<\/em>” (100Mbps+) packages and mobile service. The consumer ISP stated that they had 1.404<\/span><\/span> million FTTP customers (up from 1.283<\/span><\/span>m last quarter) and EE’s “5G<\/a> Ready<\/em>” base now stands at 8.157 <\/span><\/span>million (up from 7,737<\/span><\/span>m).<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, some 78.2<\/span><\/span>% of BT’s fixed consumer base take a “superfast broadband<\/em>” product (down from 79.3% last quarter) and 12.9% (up from 11.5%) have adopted one of for their “ultrafast broadband<\/em>” products – including both G.fast<\/a> and FTTP. We also noted that 21.7% of BT’s customers are now taking both mobile and broadband (converged) – down slightly from 21.8%.<\/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’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-Q2-2022-23-network-coverage-and-takeup\"<\/p>\n

The rollout of full fibre (FTTP) lines continues to grow, with 805,000 premises being added in the quarter (up from 763,000 last quarter). As for take-up, some 2.405 million FTTP broadband connections have been made on Openreach’s network (up from 2.074m), which equates to a take-up of 27.45% (up from 26.05% last quarter).<\/p>\n

The rapid rollout of a new network almost always tends to suppress the take-up figure, thus Openreach is doing extremely well to buck that trend with their FTTP build. All of this is despite the increasingly significant amount of rising competition from a mass of alternative full fibre networks.<\/p>\n

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

“BT Group remains on the front foot in these turbulent times. Our strategy is working, we’re executing against our plan and we’re confident that we’ll deliver our long-term ambition while underpinning economic growth in the UK.<\/p>\n

Our financial performance is on track; we grew revenue and EBITDA in the first six months of the year and we remain laser focused on modernising and simplifying BT Group. Given the current high inflationary environment, including significantly increased energy prices, we need to take additional action on our costs to maintain the cash flow needed to support our network investments. As a result, we are increasing our cost savings target from \u00a32.5bn to \u00a33.0bn by the end of FY25.<\/p>\n

High-quality connectivity has never been more important for our customers and our products provide great value for money.<\/p>\n

We continue to drive ahead with our strategy designed to deliver consistent and predictable revenue and EBITDA growth, expand cash flow and underpin our progressive dividend policy over the longer-term.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The results also contain a few other little bits of interesting information. For example, over 62% of FTTP orders in Q2 were for ultrafast speeds and 54% of all FTTP orders were from ISPs external to BT Group (e.g. Sky Broadband<\/a>, TalkTalk<\/a> etc.). The operator’s FTTP footprint is also up over 50% year on year, now passing 8.8m homes and businesses (inc. 2.8m premises in rural locations), with a further 6m where initial build is underway.<\/p>\n

The group also received a tax refund of c.\u00a30.2bn in October and have decided to reinvest this back into their fibre build, meaning that they are raising their capex outlook for this year from c.\u00a34.8bn to c.\u00a35.0bn, with the increase due to fibre connections ahead of expectations and inflation.<\/p>\n

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BT.A Quotes<\/span><\/a> by TradingView<\/div>\n