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Strategic consultancy firm Eight Advisory has today published the third edition of their Takeup Tracker, which examines the rise in take-up across the UK’s many alternative full fibre (FTTP) broadband networks (altnets) and compares it with that of Openreach (BT). This edition also takes a deeper dive into take-up by age of network – a key factor in gauging progress.
At present nearly 88% of UK premises can now access a gigabit-capable broadband network or 78% when only looking at Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) technology (here). Ofcom separately predicts the UK will achieve gigabit coverage of between 97-98% and full fibre coverage of between 95-96% by May 2027 (here).
Network coverage is a key measure when assessing progress, but in a market under so much economic strain (e.g. rising build costs and high interest rates) – and filled with so many competitive altnets (i.e. in the case of overbuild this means splitting customers between several competing networks) – it’s also very important to understand the impact of take-up by customers (residential homes, businesses etc.).
We know from our own experience in this market that a number of factors can impact take-up, such as the higher prices for faster services, the amount of local competition, as well as a lack of general awareness (i.e. locals don’t always know that the faster service exists) or interest in the new connectivity (not everybody may feel a need to get something better). The fear of switching to a different ISP may also obstruct some services, and so can long contract terms with existing packages (customers can’t switch immediately).
In addition, it’s important to remember that take-up – usually expressed as a percentage of customers connected within the network area – is somewhat of a dynamically scaled measurement, which is often suppressed while operators are in their rapid roll-out phase (i.e. covering new premises at a faster rate than customers can take it up). But the figure tends to mature faster as the build phase slows in favour of greater commercialisation, which is a process that a lot of altnets are currently going through.
Results of the take-up study
Overall, altnet penetration has slowly increased over the 6 months since the last report, which means that altnet penetration at aggregate level is now estimated to be 20% in March 2025 (up 3% from the 17% the study reported in September 2024). In the same timeframe, Openreach’s FTTP take-up rose to 36% (up 1% since Sept 2024), which is despite the operator adopting an accelerated rate of build.
At a total retail market share level, altnets are also continuing to make incremental gains in capturing market share from the five largest broadband ISPs, now accounting for around 13.4% of retail connections. This compares with BT (inc. EE and Plusnet) on 30.5%, Virgin Media (O2) on 19.7%, Sky Broadband on 20%, TalkTalk on 10.8% and Vodafone with 5.6%.
However, one catch above is that some providers – like TalkTalk and Vodafone, also work with altnets (i.e. we don’t know precisely how many of their customers come from those, although with TalkTalk it’s believed to be c.150k from just CityFibre). Openreach dominates many of the biggest providers (except VMO2), but they also suffered annualised broadband line losses to the year ending March of 828,000 (mostly from their non-FTTP network areas).
By comparison, the new study estimates that altnets cumulatively added 760k net adds over the same period as Openreach lost 828k. Virgin Media also suffered a smaller decline.
The picture is thus somewhat mixed, depending upon the aforementioned issues, such as current rate of build, competition and scale etc. For example, Netomnia and Openreach are both still deploying at a fair old rate of knots, so we don’t expect to see dramatic changes in their take-up rate.
On the other hand, G.Network’s build has been through a few stops and starts, yet their take-up remains among the weakest. We should caveat that toob’s take-up figures are also somewhat polluted by the fact that they now make significant use of CityFibre’s national network, which makes it hard to distinguish own-built take-up from that of their network partnership.
The new report also takes a much closer look at the issue of take-up vs age of network, which is relevant because take-up is something that grows organically over time (i.e. it often takes 2+ years after a network has been deployed in an area before you can get an idea of how it’s actually performing). Crucially, the data for altnets shows that more mature networks / cohorts (>24 months) are seeing penetration as high as 30-50%, while take-up within the first year tends to range from 9-19%.
The study also examines the impact of Openreach overbuild on altnet take-up, which finds that take-up is lower when the incumbent overbuilds, but it’s still strong for altnets and “continues to rise the longer the cohort has been in market“.
Openreach overbuild thus leads to an average loss in penetration of 6% for altnets. In relative terms, this means altnets achieve 75% of the penetration where they are overbuilt by Openreach’s FTTP, relative to the take-up achieved in all other competitive footprints where OR is not present.
Finally, in terms of first mover advantage (i.e. the benefit of being the first to build FTTP in a location), this was found to deliver an incremental penetration improvement of 2 percentage points relative to areas where Openreach is first to market.
Clearly, given enough time and the right locations, many (but not all) altnets can attract plenty of interest and punch above their weight, which will get them closer to the take-up levels needed for positive EBITDA and eventual profitability (quite a few have already entered positive EBITDA territory, which is a good start). But consolidation will still be needed if many are to survive longer term. The full report goes into a lot more detail.
Eight Advisory Take-up Tracker (3rd Edition)
https://www.8advisory.com/en/2025/07/04/uk-fibre-to-the-home-ftth-take-up-churn/