Fibrus is rolling out its network further across rural Cumbria, with 60% more premises gaining access to faster broadband speeds, following the extension of its Project Gigabit contract.
Fri, 4/04/2025 - 11:40
A recent report from thinkbroadband has given a unique insight and the latest statistics on UK broadband rollout and revealed that FTTP is now available to over 75% of households across the UK, with Openreach leading the way with more than half of residents coverage – an increase in full fibre of 6% since last year.
Sebastien Lahtinen, Director at thinkbroadband.com said: “Although full fibre coverage has increased by 6.3% since our last report in July 2024, gigabit coverage has only increased by 2.7%.
“This is due to overbuild by fibre providers of Virgin Media’s DOCSIS 3.1 network which can today deliver Gigabit services, plus some full fibre networks are overbuilding each other. We have also seen a slow-down in full fibre rollout with limited investment by some altnets, resulting in a few months delays in our projections for 85% and 95% full fibre coverage across the UK.”
The research also showed that following the YouFibre/Brsk merger last year, there has been approval for the Zzoomm/Full Fibre deal, creating a larger, more efficient altnet for investors.
The report noted, however, that although here have been some straight out acquisitions such as CityFibre buying Lit Fibre in May 2024, the large volume of consolidation has not yet materialised, with more focus on take-up rather than pure infrastructure build.
Across the UK, progress towards Government targets continues to progress at pace, with 85% Gigabit coverage already achieved by October 2024, and 85% of FTTP predicted to be achieved by January 2026.
Northern Ireland has been successful in achieving 85% gigabit and FTTP projected coverage alongside 95% FTTP projection.
Regionally, Yorkshire and the Humber achieved 85% of FTTP predicted coverage, with the north west and east Midlands on track to reach target by May and September 2025.
The overall market share is still dominated by Openreach, which takes 52% coverage and 17.1m of premises passed in UK total of 24.6m – with an increased footprint that will see the company overtake Virgin Media later this year, despite the Nexfibre rollout being used to increase its own coverage.
However, while the bigger incumbants remain strong, altnets are playing a vital role where incumbent FTTP services are not available, providing an alternative commercial proposition.
These include the two top altnet companies, CityFibre and Virgin Media, that have 4m and 1.6m premises passed, with 12% and 5% coverage respectively.
In spite of its relatively large market share, BT Group saw its total market connections fall from 9.2m in Q2 2022 to 8.9m in the same quarter for 2024, while altnet Sky increased its connections from 5.6m to 5.8m in Q2 2024.
Further data will be released in the next thinkbroadband report later in 2025.
