UK fibre broadband continues progress

The UK broadband sector – one of the country’s true success stories over the past five years – shows no signs of stopping, and made steady progress in the first half of 2025, with fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) coverage approaching almost four-fifths of the nation’s homes and businesses, according Point Topic’s update on fixed broadband availability.

In all, the research found that at the end of the second quarter of 2025, overall FTTP coverage – including the Openreach FTTP network, independent providers (altnets), Virgin Media O2’s fibre network and KCOM – was just over 26 million premises, representing 77.8% of the UK premises, compared with 75.8% at the end of Q1 2025, with the absolute number of FTTP premises growing 15.3% on an annual basis.

The study noted that while impressive at over 15%, growth was slowing as UK full-fibre coverage approached four out of five UK premises.

Another standout general finding was that fibre network overbuild has increased further. At the end of Q2 2025, 10.9 million premises had access to two or more FTTP networks (32.6% of all UK premises, up from 30.1% in Q1 2025).

Just over 1.75 million premises were covered by three or more fibre networks, with this number having increased by 12.4%. Nationwide, two million premises could choose between two or more fibre altnets, compared with 1.9 million in Q1 2025, with altnet overbuild slowing down.

Looking at the companies that were driving the industry in Q2 2025, the study found that UK market leader Openreach had recorded 982,00 additions to its list of full-fibre premises. Total Openreach FTTP footprint stood at 18.7 million premises, up 5.6% quarter-on-quarter, with Openreach full-fibre now covering 55.6% of all UK premises, up from 52.7% in Q1 2025.

The study also showed the continuing decline in the number of Openreach ADSL-, FTTC- and Gfast-only premises, their number falling by 977,000 – only slightly lower than the FTTP additions. Non-fibre networks still covered 14.3 million premises in the UK, though this number has decreased by 6.4% quarter-on-quarter, and it is now lower than that of FTTP premises by 4.3 million.

Openreach had the highest FTTP coverage in local authorities (LAs) outside London and the South East. Similarly to the past quarters, among the top 20 LAs by this measure, nine were in Northern Ireland. Belfast remained the leading local authority in terms of the availability of Openreach fibre, with 96% of its premises passed.

Barnet and Barnsley local authorities added most FTTP premises in Q2 2025, with 14,900 and 14,200, respectively. Nationwide, several local authorities experienced notable percentage growth in FTTP premises, with standout increases including Na h-Eileanan Siar (58.2%), Shetland Islands (36.9%), West Dunbartonshire (31.1%), South Tyneside (25%), Tamworth (23.9%) and Castle Point (21.1%).

Assessing the key altnet sector, and among such companies exceeding 100,000 fibre premises passed, CityFibre remained at the top of the league with 4.1 million FTTP covered by their network falling into ready-for-service status. Netomnia (including brsk), Nexfibre and Community Fibre had the next largest footprints with 2.5 million, 1.8 million and 1.4 million premises, respectively.