{"id":41506,"date":"2026-03-11T14:01:59","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T14:01:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ispreview.co.uk\/?p=41506"},"modified":"2026-03-11T17:09:58","modified_gmt":"2026-03-11T17:09:58","slug":"inca-alternative-uk-full-fibre-networks-cover-19-7-million-premises","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ispreview.co.uk\/index.php\/2026\/03\/inca-alternative-uk-full-fibre-networks-cover-19-7-million-premises.html","title":{"rendered":"INCA – Alternative Full Fibre Broadband Networks Cover 19.7 Million UK Premises"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Independent Networks Co-operative Association<\/a> (INCA) and Point Topic<\/a> have today released their 2026 report into the impact of alternative “full fibre<\/em>” (FTTP<\/a>\/B) broadband networks in the UK. The study reveals that their coverage grew by 20% in 2025 to top 19.7 million premises (up from 16.4m or 27% in 2024) and there are more than 3.5 million live connections (up by 32%).<\/p>\n

Just to be clear on something. INCA’s study excludes Fibre-to-the-Premises<\/strong> (FTTP<\/a>) deployments from the two largest operators – Openreach<\/a> (BT<\/a>) and Virgin Media<\/a> (VMO2) – in order to focus on independent Altnets like CityFibre<\/a>, Netomnia<\/a>, Gigaclear<\/a>, Hyperoptic<\/a>, CommunityFibre<\/a> and many more (Summary of UK Full Fibre Builds<\/strong><\/a>).<\/p>\n

NOTE:<\/strong> Openreach<\/a> has covered c.22 million premises with FTTP<\/a>, while KCOM<\/a> had c.300,000 and Virgin Media<\/a> + nexfibre<\/a> total 8.3m (here<\/a>). At present only Openreach<\/a> out of those three is still actively building at scale.<\/div>\n

The report reveals that Altnets now cover a total of over 19.7m premises ready for service, which is up by 20.1% from 16.4m last year, but with coverage growth clearly slowing from 27% in 2024. Furthermore, some 4.4m of those were in places classed by Ofcom<\/a> as \u201cArea 3<\/em>\u201d (i.e. mostly harder to reach rural locations), which is up 20% from 3m last year and means that Altnets have delivered full fibre to 46% of UK premises in harder to reach rural areas.<\/p>\n

Take-up also stands at 18% (3.5 million live connections), which is up from 16.5% last year (2.7 million live connections) – an annual growth rate of 32% (down from 35% last year). But the fact that there’s been a slowdown in altnet coverage won’t come as much of a surprise to ISPreview’s readers, as it reflects the wider economic strains (rising build costs, competition and high interest rates), with many altnets having cut jobs and slowed their build over the past 2-3 years in order to focus on greater commercialisation.<\/p>\n

NOTE:<\/strong> The figures above don’t exclude overbuild between altnets. But it\u2019s worth noting that, in total, altnets now provide exclusive FTTP\/B coverage to over 5.4m premises (i.e. areas without Openreach or Virgin Media<\/a>’s FTTP).<\/div>\n

Overall, there’s still a fair bit of build activity in the altnet space and a lot more to come, but the 2025 period was clearly another challenging one like the year before.<\/p>\n

\"INCA-2026-gigabit-and-fttp-altnet-uk-coverage\"<\/p>\n

One possible caveat above is that there can be a tendency for some network operators to report technically unfinished or non-live builds (i.e. you can\u2019t yet order a live service) as Ready for Service<\/strong> (RFS), which may cause complications when forecasting live coverage.<\/p>\n

The Financial Impacts<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n

According to INCA, investment in the Altnet sector significantly improved during 2025, with an estimated \u00a33.2bn of additional funding being committed to network expansions (up from \u00a3574m last year). But to be fair most of that did come from a handful of providers, including CityFibre<\/a>’s July 2025 announcement of \u00a32.3bn in funding from a private investment consortium.<\/p>\n

\"INCA-2026-Altnet-Funding-Totals\"<\/p>\n

However, we should point out that aspirational funding commitments are subject to significant change, much like the builds themselves, and thus should be viewed with caution. Some projects will fail, reduce or be consolidated, so we don’t expect all of this to always be fully realised (accurately accounting for this is extremely difficult due to the lack of transparency from some operators).<\/p>\n

However, taking this private sector investment together with the government\u2019s \u00a35bn Project Gigabit commitment (there’s less than \u00a32bn available from that budget), as well as other planned full fibre investments (e.g. \u00a315bn from Openreach’s FTTP deployment), quickly highlights just how much investment is still flowing into the market. The vast majority of that is still private funding, which takes a lot of the strain away from the public purse.<\/p>\n

Additional INCA Findings<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n