Research Round-up December 2025
- Veronica Speiser
- 7 days ago
- 10 min read
Key publication of the month:
We have completed our latest forecasts for fixed broadband subscribers by technology. They are based on our Global Broadband Subscriber figures for up to Q2 2025. The complete dataset referred to in this analysis is available to our Global Broadband Statistics (GBS) and European Broadband Statistics subscribers.
By 2030 we are projecting a total of 1.54 billion subscribers to a fixed broadband connection in the 30 largest broadband markets in the world, compared to 1.33 billion in Q2 2025. Full fibre (FTTP), which is already a dominant technology in most of the markets, will be the preferred option for most consumers, where it is available.
Split by technology we estimate that by 2030 there will be about 1.22 billion FTTP, 152.5 million cable, 56.6 million FTTX, 82.7 million FWA, 10.2 million satellite and 24.4 million DSL lines in these markets (Figure 1). Compared to our previous forecast, we increased FTTP and cable lines forecast while lowering the forecast of FTTX and DSL lines. These changes are based on the latest growth trends and some changes in FTTP reporting in some markets (India and Australia, for example).
Country View
All the 30 largest markets will see higher fixed broadband penetration by the end of the decade, with China, United States, India, Brazil and Japan projected to have the highest numbers of connections. China is the largest broadband market today and will remain so at the end of the decade[1].
In Europe, Spain, France and Romania are approaching maturity in terms of fibre broadband connections. At the other end of the spectrum, Belgium, Germany and Italy still have a significant way to go - there is still a lot of potential there to migrate subscribers from legacy platforms to FTTP. Also, the former two countries still have to make progress to bring FTTP coverage to the majority of their populations, with their current fibre availability below the EU average.
In the UK, FTTP subscribers have now overtaken FTTC, and FTTP take-up is forecast to accelerate as 'full fibre' becomes the best and most affordable option for the majority of households.
Outlook and Implications
By 2030, the fixed‑broadband landscape in the top 30 markets will look very different from today. The number of subscriptions will climb to about 1.54 billion, up 16% from mid-2025, and full fibre will account for most of the growth. We forecast around 1.22 billion FTTP connections, alongside 153 million cable/HFC, 57 million FTTX, 83 million FWA, 10 million satellite and 24 million DSL lines. FWA will record the fastest growth rate, more than doubling from around 32 million lines in 2025, while legacy DSL and copper‑based platforms will continue to shrink dramatically as customers migrate to fibre.
Read the complete article in our free analysis here. The complete dataset referred to in this analysis is available to our Global Broadband Statistics (GBS) and European Broadband Statistics subscribers. UK Plus subscribers can now access our quarterly Data Windows.
Explore insights and trends on pricing and ISP key metrics from 2020 to the present with our quarterly downloadable Datasets.
[1] China exceeds 100% household broadband penetration because the metric counts subscriptions, not unique homes. Many households maintain multiple broadband lines, and millions of dormitory rooms, multi-tenancy apartments, and microbusiness connections are counted as residential accounts. As a result, subscriptions can legitimately exceed the number of census households.
Key December telecoms sector news
BT Group News
4 December – Openreach announced GEN116/25 WLR and ISDN connection and conversion charges for April 2026. The notice announced price changes to its Wholesale Line Rental (WLR) and ISDN connection and conversion charges. These price changes will come into effect from 1 April 2026.
WRL rental price changes were previously announced in WLR002/25, and Incentives, pricing & migration plans for WLR withdrawal in WLR002/25.
Openreach announced the withdrawal of WLR products in December 2018 (briefing GEN073/18). New WLR services stopped being sold nationally from September 2023 and will be withdrawn from service nationally from December 2026, and earlier at specific locations in line with published notifications.
4 December – BT launches pioneering capabilities to enable UK digital sovereignty. Digital sovereignty is a growing priority for organisations of all sizes, as they look to enhance their resilience in the face of growing geopolitical instability. It’s also key to ensuring the adoption of new technologies and digital infrastructure incorporating the world’s leading global firms is future-proofed against developments outside the UK. BT is significantly enhancing its customer offering by making a range of new solutions available for customers via its sovereign platform, built on BT’s unique capabilities in UK-based systems, infrastructure and sensitive customer data management.
9 December – Umlaut Connect names EE as the UK’s best network for 11th straight year. EE also performed best in each of the nine major cities where local performance was analysed, including London, Cardiff, Edinburgh and Belfast, as well as in testing on railways and across over 5.7 billion samples of crowdsourced data.
11 December – Openreach published NGA2021/25 FTTP (including FOD) price changes for April 2026. This briefing is to inform CPs about changes to the price of FTTP (including FOD and XGS-PON pilot) products and the prices that will apply under the Equinox offer.
Openreach is announcing price changes across the GEA-FTTP portfolio (including FOD and XGS-PON pilot) and the prices that will apply under the Equinox offer.
Price changes will take effect from 01/04/2026.
Equinox 2 Standard Connections
For the following speed variants only: 40/10, 55/10, 80/20, 115/20, 160/30, 220/30, 330/50, 550/75, 1000/115 Mbit/s, 1200/120 Mbit/s and 1800/120 Mbit/s. The complete breakdown of pricing is here.
18 December – Openreach announced ETH041/25 Ethernet Price Changes for April 2026. The briefing is to inform CPs about changes to the price of Ethernet products.
Openreach are announcing changes to Ethernet product pricing, which include price changes to Ethernet Backhaul Direct (EBD), Ethernet Access Direct (EAD), legacy products (ONBS), Street Access and EAD Rugged.
It is Openreach's intention to announce special offers for FY26/27, including utilising the expanded HNR market size, as soon as possible in FY25/26 Q4. Some elements of the regulation are currently subject to consultation and will not be confirmed until the final statement is published in the Spring. However, it would like to inform CPs that it is considering announcing its FY26/27 special offers before Spring. It is working to appropriately balance yet to be confirmed regulation governing its flexibility, and giving advanced notice to CPs. It will share its special offers with CPs as early in Q4 as feasible.
Price changes will take effect from 01/04/2026. This briefing supports ACCN:OR1055.
22 December – Openreach announced NGA2025/25 Area 2 FTTP New to Network Connection Offer. This briefing is to notify CPs of a special offer under which connection charges for New to Network FTTP orders in Area 2 completed between 20 January 2026 and 31 March 2026 will be charged at £0.
Openreach is introducing a special offer providing free connections on FTTP New to Network (NTN) orders completed in Area 2. The special offer will be applicable to orders where installation is completed within the special offer window between 20 January 2026 and 31 March 2026 (inclusive), which are located in Area 2 as defined by Ofcom in the Wholesale Fixed Telecoms Market Review in 2021.
Openreach reserves the right to withdraw, change, extend, and/or limit the scope of this special offer at any time.
Virgin Media O2 (VMO2) News
3 December – Tubi launches on Virgin Media TV, bringing its massive streaming catalogue to millions of UK households at no extra cost.
10 December – Virgin Media O2 and The Multibank join forces to help people in poverty stay connected this winter.
10 December – O2 has switched on its next-generation 5G Standalone network in Essex as part of its UK-wide rollout which is now live in more than 500 locations.
16 December – Freshwave is deploying thirteen new 4G/5G outdoor small cells for O2 in Guildford city centre under an open access agreement with Surrey County Council. Nine are already live and enhancing connectivity in busy public areas, benefiting residents, businesses and visitors.
17 December – Virgin Media O2 has today released its 2025 ‘Year in Review’, revealing record levels of data consumption including an 8% rise in broadband usage and an 18% rise in mobile traffic.
19 December – Virgin Media O2 partners with Action for Children to help make Christmas special for vulnerable children across the country.
CityFibre (CF) News
10 December – Telco Titan's and ISPReview reported that, CF's CTO, David Tomalin, provided an insight into CF's future 50G + 100G PON upgrades as part of their “next [logical] business evolution” for the timeframe that runs until 2032 (exact timelines remain unknown). Business connections will be the first to benefit from this, followed later by residential customers during the 2030s.
17 December – PXC announced the launch of CityFibre Business FTTP through its scale broadband APIs, delivering one of the most advanced broadband solutions to businesses across the UK. CityFibre Business FTTP via PXC offers symmetrical bandwidth of up to 1Gbps, with both Layer 3 Managed and Layer 2 Wholesale options available. VOIP overlay is supported on managed services, and seamless API integration ensures efficient order placement and lifecycle management. With nationwide coverage, PXC partners can access a diversified network footprint while enjoying operational simplicity through a single integration, contract, and SLA, via PXC.
Independent Operators (Altnets) News
1 December – ITS switches on full fibre network in Newcastle upon Tyne and Glasgow. Glasgow marks ITS’s first expansion into Scotland, with the network now ready for service for more than 7,000 business premises. In Newcastle, the network reaches over 4,000 business premises.
3 December – Gigacear announced it had secured £80 million in funding from a consortium of banks.
4 December – ISPReview reported that Telecom Acquisitions Group (TAL), which is a holding company for a few familiar internet service provider brands (Home Telecom and Eclipse Broadband), announced it had acquired a small base of 850 more residential broadband customers from the remaining part of TalkTalk-owned UK ISP Origin Broadband.
5 December – Quickline reported that more than 10,000 rural homes and businesses can now access gigabit-capable full fibre for the first time, marking a significant step forward in closing the digital divide across the region.
As of November, it had delivered 10,610 funded premises under the government-backed Project Gigabit contract for Lot 23. A further 17,000 homes and businesses can now connect to Quickline full fibre broadband through associated commercial build activity, extending the reach and impact of the network even further.
8 December – PXC and Trooli announced that their partnership is ready to trade at scale in 2026.
Trooli’s partnership with wholesale provider of PXC’s scale will enable wider access to its FTTP footprint and create opportunities to attract more service providers and end-users to its full fibre broadband network.
For PXC, the partnership allows it to offer access to FTTP coverage of more than 460,000 homes and businesses across Trooli’s predominantly rural and semi-rural markets.
15 December – ISPReview reported that iDNet have expanded its business FTTP offerings through its reselling agreement with ITS Technology, which is reported to cover around 460,000 business premises.
16 December – Fibrus has been awarded the contract to deliver Project Gigabit in Northern Ireland, a second major contract win for the business in the region to continue delivering fast, reliable broadband to every part of the country.
The £34.6 million project is part of the UK government’s investment into Project Gigabit, to enable hard-to-reach communities to access fast, reliable, gigabit-capable broadband. The contract aims to cover approximately 9,000 additional rural premises in Northern Ireland.
Fibrus also reported that its FTTP network has now passed 450,000 premises up from 440,000 in September 2025.
16 December – Lit Fibre has agreed with Zen Internet for Zen to acquire Lit Fibre’s customer base, following a decision by Lit Fibre's Board to exit the UK broadband market. The migration is expected to begin in January 2026.
17 December – ISPReview reported that rural UK broadband provider Airband topped the 30,000 customers milestone.
Other News
1 December – Ofcom fined Virgin Media £23.8 million, after it disconnected telecare customers during its programme to migrate customers to digital landlines.
2 December – Openreach joined the National Underground Asset Register marking ‘a giant step forward’. Openreach has added location data, including ducts, conduits, poles, spans, cabinets and chambers for over 550,000 kilometres of its network to the National Underground Asset Register (NUAR) platform. The injection of new data means NUAR, the digital map of underground pipes and cables across England, Wales and Northern Ireland, now covers over 80% of known assets underneath the ground.
In total, NUAR holds detailed information from underground asset owners for an estimated 3.25 million kilometres of pipes, across electricity, gas, water, pipeline operators and telecoms. As work continues with asset owners to capture more data, the platform is edging closer to achieving full coverage for the subterranean network below.
4 December – 23 years and six months after it first came online, Three UK has successfully retired its namesake 3G network. The shutdown, years in the planning, finally took place on the morning of 27 November 2025.
By retiring 3G, VodafoneThree – the company recently created from the merger of Three UK and Vodafone UK – is able to reuse those radio frequencies for 4G and 5G services instead. These newer technologies are faster, more reliable, can serve greater numbers of customers and also use far less energy.
9 December – The race to bring satellite calls and texts to ordinary smartphones has begun, after Ofcom announced its final decisions about how the technology can be rolled out.
Mobile operators are now joining with satellite companies to deliver ‘direct-to-device services’ to everyday smartphones up and down the UK.
This involves satellites hundreds of miles above Earth beaming down signals to smartphones, so they can make calls, send texts and use data in ‘not-spots’ where there’s no mobile coverage.
15 December – Flat owners in England and Wales are set to get better access to fast and future-proofed broadband, under new proposals set out in a consultation government launched today (Monday 15 December).
The consultation is looking at proposed rights for flat-owning leaseholders to request a gigabit-capable broadband connection from their freeholder that cannot be unreasonably refused.
16 December – North Lanarkshire Council (Scotland) announced that all 36,000 council homes will be fitted with ultrafast broadband within at least five years – a first of this scale for any council in the UK.
18 December – Ofcom published its Consultation: Promoting competition and investment in fibre networks - Hull Area Review 2026-31.
19 December – BDUK published its update, December 2025: Premises contracted and built under Project Gigabit contracts.
23 December – BDUK announced that over 100 mobile masts upgraded across rural Wales, Scotland and England delivering new 4G coverage from all mobile network operators for the first time; milestone reached in government’s Plan for Change to boost rural connectivity through Shared Rural Network, helping communities get the mobile coverage they need; over 400 businesses benefiting from new 4G coverage, boosting economic growth to deliver national renewal.
23 December – ISPReview reported that the North Yorkshire Council (NYC) in England has announced that NYnet, which is the NYC-owned company that – alongside funding from the local authority, UK government (BDUK) and private investment (network operators) – helped the council to spread faster broadband connectivity across the region, is “set to be expanded nationally“.
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