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The FTTH Council Europe has just published their 2025 ranking of 39 European countries (EU39) with the strongest take-up and coverage of gigabit-capable “full fibre” (FTTP/B) broadband ISP networks. This sees the UK pass 21.4 million homes (up by 4.2m in the year) with take-up of 37.1% and a prediction that it’ll cover 31m by 2030. But growth has slowed a bit.
Firstly, it’s important to note that, compared with most of the other countries in the latest market panorama, the UK is still playing catch-up – others started deploying full fibre networks at scale many years earlier. The UK only began to appear (right at the bottom) of the council’s ranking six years ago, but we’ve been making rapid progress since then (Summary of Full Fibre Builds) and are now one of the fastest builders.
In terms of the annual change. At this time in 2021 the council reported that the UK had an FTTP growth rate (homes passed) of 1.7 million premises per year, which increased to 3.4m in 2022, 4.2m in 2023, 4.7m in 2024 (+38%) and this year we fell a bit to 4.2m (+24.56%). This means the UK is still the fastest growing country (by volume / homes) in the council’s latest EU27+UK ranking table, albeit only the fourth fastest by %.
The vast majority of the UK’s full fibre coverage has so far been delivered by commercial builds in urban areas (e.g. Openreach’s build alone should hit 25 million premises by December 2026, and they’re just one of many players), while the Government’s state aid funded £5bn Project Gigabit aims to help tackle the final 10-20% of hardest to reach (e.g. rural) premises by 2030.
Headline FTTH Stats for the UK (Sept 2024)
Homes Passed: 21,415,000 (+4.2m or 24.56% in the year)
Subscribers: 7,942,000 (+2.48m or 45.31% in the year)
Coverage: 71%
Take-up: 37.1%
Penetration Rate: 26.3%
However, it’s worth noting that a fair number of alternative networks in the UK – under pressure from rising build costs, competition and high interest rates – were forced to slow their build progress and cut jobs during the latter half of 2023 and that continued through much of 2024, which helps to explain the slowdown in the country’s growth rate.
In summary, the latest data shows that the UK now has a market penetration rate of 26.3% (up from 17.1% last year), a coverage figure of 71% or 21.4 million homes passed (up from 57% and 17.1m) and a take-up rate of 37.1% (up from 29.9% last year). By comparison, the EU39 countries have an average market penetration rate of 39.58% (up from 34.7%), with coverage of 74.61% (up from 69.9%) and a take-up rate of 53.05% (up from 49.6%).
On the subject of take-up – markets where FTTP/B is already at a mature level of deployment will naturally have significantly higher take-up, while those where the technology is still in the process of rapid deployment (like the UK) often appear further behind (i.e. the pace of build is so fast that it suppresses the % take-up figure – more premises being covered than adopting).
Overall, the total number of homes passed with FTTP/B broadband networks in the 39 European countries surveyed has reached 269m (up from 244m last year) and subscribers now stand at 143 million. The top of the annual growth rates in terms of homes passed by volume is, as above, headed by the United Kingdom, while the top 5 of the annual % growth rates in terms of homes passed are headed by Serbia (26.48%).
Future Predictions
In terms of future progress, the council’s report notes that the UK still has a long way to go in terms of build, but we’re still forecast to reach 25.5 million homes passed by the end of 2025 (up 19% in the year) and then 31 million by the end of 2030 (up by 22% between 2025 and 2030). Similarly, UK subscribers are forecast to reach 9.1m by the end of 2025 (up by 15% in the year) and 22.4m by 2030 (up by 146% between 2025 and 2030).
However, country-to-county comparisons never tell the whole story. For example, some countries have funded the deployment of fibre almost entirely from public money, while offering very little in the way of competition (e.g. weak consumer choice). Meanwhile, other countries have a significantly higher proportion of people living in large blocks of flats (e.g. Spain, Portugal), which are much cheaper and quicker to serve that those with a greater proportion of individual housing (e.g. UK).
