This is our regular update on fixed broadband availability in the UK, tracking the progress between the end of June 2024 and the end of September 2024. The analysis is based on the ThinkPoint broadband availability dataset which includes 1.7m postcodes. More granular, postcode level broadband availability updates by ISP and technology, are available to our ThinkPoint customers.
Note: There will generally be a lag to the operator announcements for premises passed at the time since it takes us time to properly track and audit any new deployments, unless the operators tell us about them. Also, we report RFS (ready for service) premises, while some operators and ISPs include premises where customers can pre-order a broadband service.
Key headlines
At the end of Q3 2024, the overall FTTP coverage was 23.2m premises (70.5% of the UK total). This metric was up from 67.7% in Q2 2024.
Nearly 8.3 million premises (25% of the UK premises) had access to 2 or more FTTP networks, and 1.1m were covered by 3+ fibre networks.
The FTTP coverage was 50% or higher in 84.5% of local authorities, up from 77.5% of LAs three months earlier. We recorded a number of high growth areas in East Midlands and the East of England.
The largest number of FTTP premises added was in Stoke-on-Trent (+28K), Birmingham (+18K), and King’s Lynn and West Norfolk (+13K).
Stoke-on-Trent also saw the most marked increase in the proportion of premises passed with FTTP – from 42% in Q2 2024 to 64.3% in Q3 2024.
Nationwide 1.7m premises could choose between two or more fibre altnets. Almost 134K premises were served by 3+ alternative fibre networks.
Openreach and FTTP in general
In Q3 2024, we recorded 869K additions in the full fibre premises passed by Openreach. Our total recorded Openreach FTTP footprint stood at 15.1 million premises, up 6.1% quarter-on-quarter (Table 1). Our recorded additions for Openreach this quarter were lower than in Q2 by almost 100K. Openreach full fibre now covers 46% of all UK premises, up from 43.4% in Q2 2024.
The decline in the number of Openreach ADSL, FTTC and Gfast only premises continued – their number went down by 864K, which is slightly lower than the FTTP additions. Once again, the largest decline (-743K premises) was in FTTC only coverage. Non-fibre platforms still covered 17.3 million premises in the UK, though this number has decreased by 4.8% quarter on quarter.
Table 1. Openreach footprint by technology, Q3 2024. Source: Point-Topic.
In terms of the proportion of total LA premises passed by Openreach FTTP, it has particularly extensive FTTP coverage in regions and locations outside London and the South East. Similarly to the past few quarters, among the top 20 LAs by this measure, nine are in Northern Ireland (Figure 1 ). Belfast remains the leading local authority in terms of the availability of Openreach fibre, with 95.9% of its premises passed, an increase from 95.68% in Q2 2024. Fylde and Erewash are the new entrants to the top 20 ranking this quarter.
Figure 1. Top 20 LAs by the proportion of total premises passed by Openreach FTTP, Q3 2024. Source: Point Topic.
During Q3 2024, Openreach added most FTTP premises in County Durham (+18K). Birmingham and Havering saw +16K and +14K new Openreach fibre premises respectively. While it’s a rather mixed bag, the top ten LAs by new FTTP premises covered were located predominantly in the northern and central parts of the UK. However this quarter we saw two London LAs (Havering and Sutton) and two Southwest LAs (Somerset and North Somerset) in the top ten league (Table 2).
Table 2. Top ten LAs by Openreach FTTP premises added in Q3 2024. Source: Point-Topic.
At the end of Q3 2024, the overall FTTP coverage, including Openreach FTTP network, altnets, Virgin Media O2’s RFOG network and KCOM was 23.2m premises (70.5% of the UK total, compared to 67.7% in Q2 2024). The number of FTTP-enabled premises was up 4.1% q-o-q, with the growth continuing, albeit a bit more slowly than in Q2.
Increasing network overbuild could be partly to blame for the slowdown in growth. At the end of September 2024, nearly 8.3 million premises had access to 2 or more FTTP networks, and just over 1.1m were covered by 3+ fibre networks, up by 8% and 14% respectively quarter on quarter.
Table 3. FTTP network overbuild (all FTTP networks). Source: Point Topic.
Table 4 lists the bottom ten UK local authorities (LAs) by FTTP coverage in Q3 2024. Once again, it is encouraging to see that the list this quarter features higher percentages – 6% to 26.7%, compared to 6% to 24.5% in the previous quarter, as FTTP networks cover more premises across local authorities. In Q3 2024, South Tyneside added nearly 3K FTTP premises and got pushed out of the bottom ten by Eastleigh, which added only 81.
Table 4. Bottom local authorities by percentage of premises covered with FTTP (any network). Source: Point Topic.
Eight out of the top ten best covered FTTP areas are Northern Ireland LAs, largely as a result of Openreach’s prominent FTTP presence in the country as well as the likes of Fibrus and nexfibre. The top ‘fibre rich’ local authority remains Kingston upon Hull (99.41% FTTP coverage), largely due to fibre rollout by KCOM as well as MS3. Coventry also made the top ten, with 94.47% of its premises covered by FTTP. (The build in the top ten LAs is more or less complete, and as we see little change in this ranking we do not feature it any more).
It should be noted that these figures do not include Virgin Media O2’s Docsis 3.1 network coverage, which is widely available in some of the LAs. For the combined coverage data see our granular dataset.
Among the LAs, the largest number of FTTP premises added was in Stoke-on-Trent (+28K), Birmingham (+18K), and King’s Lynn and West Norfolk (+13K). This quarter, the top ten ranking is quite diverse in terms of regions, with Cornwall and the Isle of Wight good examples of the new entrants. The latter already has 88% FTTP coverage, compared to, for example, Cumberland which still has a long way to go to reach nearly complete FTTP coverage – only 53% of premises in this LA had FTTP available in Q3 2024.
Table 5. Top ten LAs by FTTP premises added in Q3 2024. Source: Point Topic.
As some operators are slowing down their footprint expansion due to cost and labour issues and focus on encouraging service take-up, only 19 local authorities saw 10%+ increase in the percentage of their premises passed with FTTP networks. This quarter, a lot of high growth areas are located in the eastern parts of the UK (East of England and East Midlands).
Stoke-on-Tren saw the most marked increase in the proportion of premises passed with FTTP – from 42% in Q2 2024 to 64.3% in Q3 2024 (Figure 2). Again, East of England and East Midlands dominate this league table.
Figure 2. Top ten local authorities by increase in percentage of premises passed by FTTP, Q3 2024. Source: Point Topic.
At the end of Q3 2024, FTTP coverage was lower than 20% of premises in 8 local authorities, down from 9 three months earlier. The FTTP coverage was 50% or higher in 84.5% of local authorities, up from 77.5% of LAs three months earlier.
VMO2 and Nexfibre
In addition to Openreach and altnets, Virgin Media O2 (VMO2) is carrying full fibre network rollout, mainly via their nexfibre venture using XGS-PON technology. It made progress in Q3 2024, when nexfibre passed 1.23m premises, up from 1.06m in Q2 2024 (+16.3%). In its July 2024 update, the operator said that the next stage of its network rollout will see high volumes of build in Eastbourne, Weymouth and Nantwich, ‘with North Wales being well-served’.
nexfibre aims to roll out full fibre to 5 million homes not currently served by VMO2’s network by 2026, with the opportunity to expand to an additional 2 million homes.
In Q3 2024, VMO2’s own RFOG/FTTP premises stood at 1.74m, up from 1.67m in the previous quarter. The operator plans to upgrade its entire network (17.7m premises) to full fibre by the end of 2028.
Fibre Altnets
As an increasing number of altnets are exceeding 100K fibre premises passed, we are now focusing on this category. At the end of Q3 2024, CityFibre was at the top of the league with 3.4m FTTP premises covered by their network (Ready for Service premises). Vodafone, TalkTalk and Zen remained the largest retail providers using CityFibre’s network, with more than 3m each. This could change, once Sky start selling FTTP over CityFibre’s network, following the recent announcement of their partnership. More broadly, with Sky already using Openreach and OFNL networks, this new deal could see them becoming the largest fibre broadband retailer, ahead of Vodafone.
According to our records, in Q3 2024 Community Fibre passed 1.4m premises, followed by nexfibre with 1.2m, Netomnia with 1.1m[1], Hyperoptic with just over 1m, and brsk with over 0.6m (Figure 3). We recorded the largest quarterly increase in premises passed for nexfibre (+16.3%).
Further consolidation in the market is underway. In June 2024, Netomnia and brsk announced a merger which will have a combined network footprint of 1.8 million premises as things stand, with a target of reaching 3 million premises by the end of 2025. Meanwhile, In March 2024, CityFibre announced its acquisition of Lit Fibre, in what it described as ‘the first of several deals CityFibre expects to close over the next two years’.
(Until the deals are approved and completed, we are still reporting brsk and Lit Fibre as separate entities).
[1] Netomnia are reporting 1.2m – see our earlier note about the lag of our data behind operator announcements.
Figure 3. Premises passed by altnets, Q3 2024 (more than 100K premises). Source: Point Topic.
Overbuild by FTTP altnets has increased further, as multiple network operators are increasingly competing for the same customers. This will put further pressure on take-up rates, profit margins and lead to further consolidation in the market.
In Q3 2024, 86 local authorities had three overlapping fibre altnets, up from 80 in the previous quarter. Tendring in the East of England and Boston in East Midlands led by the percentage of premises served by three altnets, with 12.4% and 10.33% respectively. Five out of the top ten LAs in this category were in London and the South East, where higher population density and average household income do play a part. Among all the 86 LAs with three fibre altnets present, 33 were in these southern regions.
Table 6. Top local authorities by % of premises served by three fibre altnets overlapping, Q3 2024. Source: Point Topic.
Two fibre altnets overlapped in 280 local authorities, up from 269 in Q2 2024. Cheltenham and Causeway Coast and Glens saw the highest percentage of premises served by two fibre altnets, at 35.6% and 33.4% respectively. In the top ten league of two networks overlapping, four local authorities were in London. Overall, LAs with two networks were more equally spread out across the UK than those with 3 networks.
Table 7. Top local authorities by % of premises served by two fibre altnets overlapping, Q3 2024. Source: Point Topic.
Nationwide 1.7m premises could choose between two or more fibre altnets. Almost 134K premises were served by 3+ alternative fibre networks.
Table 8. Altnet overbuild, Q3 2024. Source: Point Topic.
Gigabit Coverage
At the end of Q3 2024, 16.2% of UK premises did not have access to gigabit capable broadband (either a Docsis3.1 network or an FTTP network), down from 17.7% in Q2 2024. So, the Project Gigabit target of 85% gigabit coverage by 2025 has almost been reached.
The largest improvement in this area was in Wales, where the percentage of gigabit deficient premises went down by 1.95 points, from 27% to 25.05%. England saw a 1.5% improvement (from 17% to 15.45%). In Scotland gigabit deficiency dropped from 23.9% to 22.52% (-1.38%). In Northern Ireland, where only 3.6% of premises did not have gigabit coverage in Q3 2024, this measure improved by 0.69% during the quarter.
Figure 4. Percentage of premises not covered by gigabit network. Source: Point Topic.
Local authorities in remote and rural areas still lack access to gigabit broadband, with Na h-Eileanan Siar topping the list by the percentage of premises not passed by gigabit capable networks (93.6%) (Table 9). Ceredigion and Stroud joined ‘the list of shame’ this quarter, pushing out Blaenau Gwent and East Lindsey.
This quarter we recorded the largest improvement in King’s Lynn and North Yorkshire – in both local authorities 13K additional premises gained gigabit access in Q3 2024.
Table 9. Twenty local authorities with the worst gigabit coverage, Q3 2024. Source: Point Topic.
The complete dataset used to produce this analysis is part of our ThinkPoint service which involves UK Broadband Mapping at postcode level. For more information check our UK Mapping page.
To find out more you can contact us on 020 3301 3303 or e-mail oliver.johnson@point- topic.com
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