{"id":35230,"date":"2023-11-02T07:48:05","date_gmt":"2023-11-02T07:48:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ispreview.co.uk\/?p=35230"},"modified":"2023-11-02T10:02:18","modified_gmt":"2023-11-02T10:02:18","slug":"bt-group-add-860000-fttp-broadband-premises-to-uk-coverage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ispreview.co.uk\/index.php\/2023\/11\/bt-group-add-860000-fttp-broadband-premises-to-uk-coverage.html","title":{"rendered":"BT Group Add Record 860,000 FTTP Broadband Premises to UK Coverage"},"content":{"rendered":"

The BT<\/a> Group has published their latest H1 FY24 results to September 2023, which reveals that Openreach<\/a>’s full fibre (FTTP<\/a>) broadband ISP network added a record of 860,000 premises to their coverage (up from 718k last quarter) and now covers 11.85 million premises, with a further 6m where initial build is underway.<\/p>\n

Sadly, the provider’s retail divisions – including BT<\/a>, EE<\/a> and Plusnet<\/a> – don’t publish full customer figures for their own ISP products, but they do report data for their “ultrafast broadband<\/em>” (100Mbps+) plans and mobile service. The ISP stated that they had 2.08 million FTTP<\/a> customers (up from 1.745m in FY23) and EE<\/a>’s 5G<\/a> connections now stand at 8.953 million (up from 7.774m). On top of that, the operator now reports that their consumers gobble an average of 389 GigaBytes (GB) of data per month (up from 364.6GB).<\/p>\n

NOTE:<\/strong> Openreach<\/a>’s average FTTP<\/a> build rate is now 66,000 premises per week (up from 55k in June and 54k in March 2023) 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

Overall, some 72.5% of BT<\/a>’s fixed consumer base take a “superfast broadband<\/em>” product (down from 75.5% in FY23) and 20.8% (up from 16.8%) have adopted one of their “ultrafast<\/em>” products – including both G.fast<\/a> and FTTP, which largely reflects FTTP cannibalising customers from slower packages. We also noted that 23% of BT’s customers are now taking both mobile and broadband (converged), which is up from 22.8%.<\/p>\n

Financial Highlights – BT’s Half-Yearly Change<\/strong><\/span>
\n* BT Group revenue = \u00a310,414m (up from \u00a310,301m in H2 FY23)
\n* BT Group total reported net debt = \u00a3(19,689)m (increased from \u00a3(18,859)m)
\n* BT Group profit after tax = \u00a3844m (down from \u00a31,012m)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We should add that EE<\/a>’s 5G<\/a> UK population coverage has now increased to 72%.<\/p>\n

Openreach’s Network<\/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-FY24-H1-network-coverage-and-takeup\"<\/p>\n

As usual, the rollout of their Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) lines continues to grow, with 860,000 premises being added in the quarter and that’s up from 718,000 last quarter. As for take-up, some 3.871 million FTTP broadband connections have been made on Openreach’s network (up from 3.123m), which equates to a take-up of 33% (up from 32% last quarter).<\/p>\n

The rapid rollout of a new network almost always tends to suppress the take-up figure, thus Openreach continues to do extremely well to buck that trend – all despite an increasingly significant amount of competition from rival networks. This also goes to highlight the challenge AltNets are facing in peeling consumers away from the resident industry giant.<\/p>\n

The other change worth noting above is that Openreach are no longer reporting any stats for their hybrid fibre G.fast<\/a> network, which isn’t too surprising as they’ve been static since the roll-out was shelved several years ago. On the other hand, they do still report connection data for ADSL<\/a> and VDSL (FTTC<\/a>) but not G.fast<\/a>, so perhaps they’re just embarrassed of it.<\/p>\n

Openreach’s broadband ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) also grew by 10% year-on-year “due to price rises and increased volumes of FTTP<\/em>“. But the operator suffered broadband line losses of 255k in H1, which is a 1% decline in the broadband base and they continue to target a decline of around 400k in FY24 – “softer market conditions increase the risk that losses will be above this level<\/em>” (i.e. competition is putting pressure on them).<\/p>\n

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

\u201cThese results show that BT Group is delivering and on target: we\u2019re rapidly building and connecting customers to our next generation networks, we\u2019re simplifying our products and services, and we\u2019re now seeing predictable and consistent revenue and EBITDA growth.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve strengthened our competitive position with the launch of both New EE and our renewed strategy in Business, and Openreach has now built full fibre broadband to more than a third of the UK’s homes and businesses with a growing connection rate. Our transformation programme has now delivered \u00a32.5bn in annualised savings, well on track to meet our \u00a33bn savings target by FY25.<\/p>\n

Our delivery in the first half means we are confirming our financial outlook for FY24 with normalised free cash flow now expected towards the top end of the guidance range, and we are declaring an interim dividend of 2.31 pence per share. BT Group has a bright future and I\u2019m pleased to be handing the baton to Allison Kirkby early in the new year. She knows the sector, she knows the company and she\u2019s the right person to lead BT Group from this position of operational strength.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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 quarters and that similarly means we will only be able to do two detailed reports every year instead of four.<\/p>\n

Just a quick reminder. The previous set of results included a new metric, which predicted that their total labour force would shrink from 130,000 to between 75,000 and 90,000 by 2030. 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 this same date. So far they’ve maintained their build cost envelope of \u00a3250-\u00a3350 per premises.<\/p>\n

The latest report includes a quick progress update on this, which BT says shows they’re making “strong progress against these strategic metrics<\/em>” (although “progress<\/em>” is a word that might annoy those losing their jobs):<\/p>\n

BT Group’s Targets – Progress<\/strong><\/span>
\n\u2022 Total labour resource decreased by 7k to 123k; target of 75-90k<\/p>\n

\u2022 FTTP premises passed increased by 1.6m to 11.9m; target of 25-30m<\/p>\n

\u2022 Openreach take-up increased by 3 percentage points to 33% and retail take-up increased by 0.4m to 2.2m; targets of 40-
\n55% and 6.5-8.5m respectively<\/p>\n

\u2022 5G<\/a> UK population coverage increased to 72% and 5G retail connections increased by 1.3m to 9.9m; target of 13.0-14.5m<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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